AugMentors

hey we're au and we build through mentoring i'm julie and i'm jimmy and today we are joined by brad johnson professor former navy pilot workplace strategist an author of good guys how men can be better allies for women in the workplace brad provides excellent actionable advice for men to help other men be prepared for today's workplace and gives examples of how to make sure men can be active participants not passive active participants in an organization where culture is going to power innovation and sustainability and a culture is successful in this long term growth is gonna prioritize equity and a diversity of perspective but the only way to do that is to have active participation by all individuals in the organization thanks brad here's our conversation brad johnson i am so looking forward to this conversation thank you so much for taking time to come to chat with us today how are you doing i am doing well thanks for including me i'm excited to have this conversation with you i am too i have to admit i was definitely stalking you a bit on linkedin i think i came across some of your content and i immediately reach out tracked you down tried to find you and said would you please come on this podcast because you are talking about a topic that is near and dear to my heart and i think a lot of it here which is really about men as allies in the workplace and supporting women on their leadership journey mh something that's come up quite a bit in our work and a lot of our conversations and i know you aren't an expert so we're really excited to dig in but before we get too far we love to get a chance to get to know you before we start off and our first question always is a mentor is typically somebody that saw something in you before you saw it in yourself so we'd love to know who is that mentor for you and what did they see yeah oh it's such a great question and i asked two mentors actually came to mind for me as i was thinking about this for and i'll mention them quickly first of all chuck ridley so when i when i applied to grad school in clinical psychology the department of clinical psych at the time had an interesting policy they would get together with all of their applicants and it was like i i don't know i imagine like the nfl draft they would all get to kick stupid psychology holiday yeah right right yeah i'll how are your i'll trade you brad johnson for you know what i don't know what that was like but i remember getting the phone call when i had you know i just graduated from college i get the the call from chuck ridley and it was so clear that he was excited to have selected me as his student in the graduate program and so that meant i was kinda committed to him for five or six years you know going through the phd but it felt so powerful to me to have a mentor somebody i really admired and respect to communicate that they were delighted and excited to work with me and there's something so powerful about that at the beginning of a relationship when men somebody who feels like an impostor has somebody say oh i am delighted to work with you i see talent i see potential and i i couldn't be more thrilled so that set off our relationship and and i just kinda went from there and i can talk more about what i gain from that relationship but i have to say being chosen feeling that way as men really powerful and then the other person and we're gonna talk about gender today so i gotta give a shout out to betsy holmes captain bet see home so when i was in the navy as an officer there was a pivotal moment where i'd been doing clinical psych for about four years as an officer seeing patients in the navy betsy was my supervisor and my mentor and there was a moment where i risked in a conversation with her and just said betsy i don't like this i don't like seeing clients an hour after hour i find it so exhausting and boring it just doesn't speak to me you know my happiest moment when a client cancels and work i can work on a a journal article or you know do something else it feels creative to me and she looks at me and just says of course i've seen that in you for the last several years so what are were you gonna do about it and and that was such a risk for me because i you know i was confessing that after all of this training that's not what i wanted to do i wanted to teach and right and she validated it she just said of course yeah so how can i help you then move into academia or or something that would really speak to you so that was another really powerful moment for me i love that so it's really about versus the identification and we all relate to that like you said in any relationship whether that's a new friend or whether that's in business relationship or certainly in a mentor relationship when somebody really see something of value in you and it allows you to see that in yourself i love that and just the ability to be able to be honest and to be able to really share you know we talk a lot about sharing vulnerability and that how important that is a mentor relationship because if you're not be honest somebody can't really relate help you those are those are great stories sounds like really cool mentors yes they were they are brad i i'm curious i know this is going way back but like you said the the in the beginning of that relationship with chuck ridley you felt chosen and you know if people don't remember like what you say or do there remember how like how you made them feel yeah do you have any memory of what he did actually to make you feel chosen was it just like the phone call and energy or like was there anything like maybe specific in that because that can be so hard and sometimes daunting for mentors now to understand how to make a men feel something yeah yeah yeah well i i we're probably gonna give more into this but i i yeah you know when i'm doing mentor trainings or workshops one of the things i always come back to is do not forget the decades and decades of surveys of men ts asking them what was most powerful what what meant the most to you in your journey and it always i'm i'm shocked every time that simply affirmation right affirming me making me feel like i belong that i had potential that always bubbles to the top of the list and and i think that was a huge thing for me in that moment because i felt like oh you know who am i and can i even survive a doc program i yeah have all these self doubts and to have chuck reach out and really in that first conversation and the ones that followed during the first year go out of his way to affirm me my potential you do belong here no you didn't get selected by mistake i'm really proud to be working with you there was just a steady stream of affirmation and i needed that i i don't think that i could have identified how much i needed it at the time but that's what i needed and so developmental i just thought it was such a powerful thing to welcome me enthusiastically at that moment i i love that line a stream of affirmations being a a navy guy you will enjoy all of our preparing and literal nuances that we'd like to bring in so yes i love that i love that so i'd love to talk a little bit about your workplace allies work first of all we always talk about the why why people do the work that they do so i imagine the story of how this came to be would also crude why but please sell us more yes yeah yeah so i'll give you my why in in just a couple of minutes here so my why because i i will just tell you it's funny that you mentioned this julie because in the work that dave and i do my coa author david smith soc he and i formed workplace allies he and i do all the research and writing together about how men can be better allies and quite often when he and i are speaking especially to women groups of women of course they wanna know your why like what are you guys really about like what's your thing why why are you doing this can we even trust you are you guys you know just doing this performative and i think the consequence of that is we've gotten really comfortable articulating our why and by the way men are gonna wanna know this too so if you hold another men account a male accountable like he says something sexist inappropriate and you say hey hey no we don't do that here i didn't find that funny when you start doing that men are gonna wanna know your why too like dude what's what's your thing about you know calling out this stuff in the workplace so my why two things i think academically there's a strand you know i've for thirty years i've been researching men mentoring and sponsoring and i've noticed the research showing that men just don't engage as often with women right they feel reluctant they feel anxious they're concerned they don't wanna step in it so they stay on the sidelines and they often don't sometimes identify women as high talent future leaders so they just they don't offer mentoring and i've been so curious about what that's about why don't why don't men engage so that's kind of the business case or the academic case you know i i that's something i wanna solve for there's a personal part of my y too so i have one sibling it's a younger sister interestingly shannon kind of followed my career path so she also became a clinical psychologist she also became commissioned in the navy as a psychologist i only stayed for four years active duty my rock star sister has stayed for thirty she's still wow in the navy she's a senior navy captain she has had three combat deployments in a rock and afghanistan she's had aircraft carrier tours i mean she is a warrior and i you know talk to my sister every other week or so we have great conversations listening to my sister for thirty years and hearing the gender headwind that she encounters every day in the same career i was in it's just been an epiphany for me you know shannon has told every week hey you should smile more or you know if she gives a guy direct feedback she's told she's abrasive or if she runs too fast on a physical fitness test and beats all the guys she's made to feel bad hey she's too competitive or you know whatever it is maybe you should yeah you should tone it down a little bit because the guys are gonna feel bad that you crush them in and and i i share with her all the time shannon that has never happened to me i just gotta tell you and if you're feeling bad about beating all the guys just remember that's messaging you've received right growing up and in the workplace that we've gotta help you overcome because a guy would respond to that with oh i crushed you guys in your face but you've been socialize differently right to feel bad or guilty or ashamed so it has been that that very instructive relationship with my sister that has i think fueled some of my wife or this work wow that is amazing to be able to like so kinda su simply put together those like three examples that i heard that you know i've been i think talked about quite a a lot in research and just an anecdote it's about you know smile more being too abrasive or just hate you're too competitive how is shannon able to continue to voice these things you know week after week year after year and stay positive in this headwind that you're describing what keeps her so motivated you know it's it's an interesting question and i've talked to shannon about this i mean part of it probably just her her character she's pretty tough and you can imagine you know someone who does six month deployments in in combat you know environments routinely she stuff is nails but i think the other part of it is shannon is all about the mission mean she looks at the young marines and sailors that she works with every day who are wounded warriors and and i think for her it's all about the mission right and i think reminding herself it's not about me it's not about some of the headwind i encounter it's about this mission which which is bigger than i am and you know yeah i i experienced some sexism and bias but i also have an opportunity to role model for junior women to help some of those men who don't get it to get better so i think for shannon it's it's really mission driven is there any any communication from leadership that's changed over the thirty years to more clearly align the strategy of the navy or maybe we can talk you know more broadly of just any organization that makes it more clear that the mission is tied into this more equitable playing field where the headwind are reduced like have you have you been able to see this clearly articulated over time yes i've seen a huge change i you know i'm glad you're i'm glad you're framing that jimmy because now we're getting to the mission or the business case for gender equity right some of the most powerful things i've ever witnessed when it comes to people who do this well dave and i you know speaking a lot of organizations and one of the things that is most powerful is we're getting ready to take the stage and speak is when the ceo who's often a male will stand up and give his why and there are kinda two parts to it that make it really high impact number one he shares his personal why hey here's why it matters to me and maybe it's daughters maybe it is a partner maybe it is high talent colleagues who are women that he works with but he shares it authentic way these women matter to me so we're gonna get this right but then he pivot to your point jimmy and ties it into the mission of the organization and if it's a company it's the bottom line hey if we get to better gender balance and representation around gender all the way up into the c suite we're simply gonna do better the evidence is clear we're gonna make more money we're gonna be more resilient we're gonna go farther i i see the same thing in the military it's really clear when you have diversity of thought on senior teams on mission planning teams you simply have better outcome and we see that in the military just like we see it everywhere else so yes to have a leader articulate that in a compelling way i i think it's really important i love that and i feel like i've seen an change even generational as well so of course there is now the business case but i think there is a mindset shift between you know sort of gen millennials younger millennials and that shift of it's just not as odd for women to be the leader it's just not as remarkable or just not as and maybe there's an aspect of that happening that also makes it seem less important to maybe be talk continue to be talking about it but at the same time we know a lot of these headwind continue to be faced so that it is still important to keep talking about it one thing i'd love to ask is particularly brad like how do you see mentoring you know when we talk about maybe some of the headwind that your sister sees and some of the work you are doing we know that mentoring is not the solution to everything although three of us are obviously very passionate about it could potentially argue that it is well how yeah how do you see mentoring really being being a big piece of that it's a huge piece so when dave and i began our work together you know our first book was athena rising how men can be better mentors for women and we you know that's where we began our journey we really wanted to understand what keeps men on the sidelines and so we went out and did this huge research project interviewing lots of women across industries and professions and asking them these very behavioral questions what does it look like to you when a male has been a good mentor what are the behaviors what are the attitudes what do you really appreciate and we aggregated all of that and and really just kinda wanted to give it away as the playbook to men about how we can be better from the voices of women and so i will just tell you the data is interesting on this you know when a woman has a a male mentor chances are really good she's gonna make more money she's gonna go farther she's gonna get more promotions and have more opportunities and we always are careful to say this is not because men or better mentors were not it's really clear the the truth is we often hold more power we have more social capital we're we're higher in the organization so we can do more of the sponsorship so i think that's what that's all about but women benefit now here's the irony and i don't think we'd talk about this enough men benefit when they have women who are mentors or when they mentor women and we don't talk about that we don't help men understand what's in it for them but we should do more of that so we find that men who have you know are mentoring women or have close female colleagues at work or have had a female mentor they have better networks they have better empathy they have more e q they have better understanding and kind of situational awareness of what women encounter in the workplace they tend to curate these lifelong friendships with women that are really meaningful to them and by the way all of those interpersonal skills of men develop when they have better relationships with women you don't check that at the door when you leave work right you get to take that home and be a better parent better partner so last thing we're we're looking at research in the last ten years on men who are getting promoted to the c suite in a lot of companies and organizations and we're seeing an interesting change those men who are recently getting promoted it is not the top down hierarchical command and control leadership style these are men who lead with empathy curiosity humility genuine authenticity and and it's a change and so if you're good at developmental relationships boy this is gonna be good for you personally and career wise i love it and i can say my life is significantly better and improve business wise let alone my life as a whole because of all the wonderful women that are gracious enough to give me some time to speak with me my fantastic partner one of many i'll put a very important one julie so thank you it means a lot and you didn't necessarily say this brad but i think a huge piece of this is it's not for you know women to help men figure out how to get our heads into twenty twenty four it's men getting men and mentoring men to get prepared to be better men ts or better mentors with women what are some of the best practices for a man to help another man be ready and and fully prepared tactically to assist a woman through an equitable whatever experience at work but make sure we're smoothing out a whole lot of potential micro aggression etcetera that could get in the way of a really strong beginning to a a man and a woman in a mentoring relationship well so if i'm trying to help a man get better in this space i mean first of all i got a hand him a copy of athena rising and say dude self arrives we get shit we gonna show out you get you got a self educate you you know let's do some self learning i it concerns me often when i i think as you're alluding jimmy expect women to self to educate them right about what women want or need or what they experience in the workplace there's so much out there on you know gender differences and what women encounter at work so i can do some some self educating then when you show up i you know let's just talk about two big categories so i mean number one the interpersonal let's show up with genuine authenticity and humility let's show up with real curiosity recognizing you don't know what her experience has been like you're if especially if you don't identify as a women a woman you haven't been there let's show up without assumptions about what she'll want or not want in her career don't assume for her that she's gonna wanna be just like you your follow in in your career path could you listen for goodness sake i'm so i'm so shocked but you know when you're interviewing women about what do you wish men would do more of listening always bubbles at the top and what it's communicating to me is that wee man as a group have a lot of work to do around what i call generous listening spacious listening not listening with the intent to fix her or a problem but to really be a good sounding board and and understand so show up with that attitude build trust in the relationship so you've gotta be authentic but you also have to be consistent so she hears about something that you said about her when she wasn't in the room it better be affirm better be positive she better not have any doubts that you have her back and that you're consistent that way so those are just a few and they're are a lot more on the interpersonal on the more public side you gotta be her her sponsor you you gotta i think some people love to divorce mentoring and sponsoring and say oh they're in entirely different things that's just not what the data shows and often really great managers can also do sponsoring so if you're in any environment and you're mentoring a high talent woman are you talking about her when she's not even in the room are you her raving fan when you introduce her to people do you go out of your way to network her and tell everybody what you think of her and how great she is do you call out her achievements if you're not doing that it's probably a real missed opportunity to really help create opportunity for her i love it since normally julie is the big talker i'm gonna keep talking here because i can keep raving about julie for quite some time and i do i i would like one more tip for a men helping men i i love your point about you know could you listen for goodness sake i think that is all is a lie i'll keep with me but you know too often if i say hey why don't you read a book to somebody especially if it's maybe a conversation with a bit of productive tension behind it when i when you already said earlier if someone makes a comment we say hey cut it out that's not something that gonna happen in our organization if it starts with that and then i say read a book that might be a bit of a a cliff for me to get somebody to in that moment how can i make it you know and it sounds kinda pitiful that we need to make it approachable and accessible for somebody to start having this behavior change but like what are some like smaller ways to get somebody from a comment that that is without thought but very hurtful to being prepared to read a book yeah yeah you know i i guess couple of things come to mind there jimmy and number one there are men who just report or will express especially if they trust you that they're just not comfortable in you know maybe it's meetings with women maybe it's closed door conversations with women maybe it's going to a meal alone with a woman there there are men who just are are creeped out by that they feel uncomfortable they feel anxious so number one i'd love to have a curious conversation with him about what that's about right i don't wanna judge him right it it would be very easy for me because i've been in this space for a long time to say dude we're not in the middle ages you've got you've gotta get over that you've gotta deal with your anxiety i and i'm not gonna do that i'm gonna say help me understand why that is concerning to you or why you don't feel comfortable you know i i think if there's anxiety about engaging with women in close developmental relationships there's an opportunity to help with that you know let's do exposure therapy let's let's start with you know let's start with maybe a small group of a few different women you might be supervising or mentoring this maybe it feels less risky that way let's let's do you know maybe some sort of team team mentoring model or or something like that i also would love to know if some of that is cultural because sometimes that is the case and then i you know i wanna be respectful of that but just help help him kind of figure out how can he level the playing field for women and men so that it people have equal access to him so if it's the closed door thing for example well for goodness sake then don't have closed door meetings with men let's let's keep it equal let's make sure everybody has opportunity to engage with you in exactly the same way so people don't notice any difference i would also just tell men who are afraid of optics maybe it's gossip right if i'm mentoring a junior woman people are gonna talk well not really if you mentor a lot of women and men right you're kinda equal opportunity people see you having coffee with both men and women there's no story there if you are a guy who never mentors women and suddenly you start spending a ton of time with only one woman maybe she's junior to you that looks creepy and you've created that situation so make it part of your brand part of your leader brand it's just how you show up and i don't think you have much to be concerned about i am absolutely loving this conversation and it makes me think about all the guests that we've had over time so many you know we've had obviously both a male and female guests but a lot of the female guests really talking and saying like it's it okay if i say that it was a man you know okay if i say it was a white van it was my first door what they said it also makes me think a lot about fathers because i know a lot of our guests women and certainly myself my dad was an amazing mentor he was a business owner and he really believed in me as a business owner and it's and all the women in my family are business owners and and a lot of us who obviously you know it's been a lot of time with my father before he passed but i think that idea of what he brought to his workplace and the women that he mentored in his workplace was also what he brought home to us so i think just giving another like exclamation mark you know star for the work that you do in the workplace and how that affects the women in your family and the women in your life and i don't know if all of us would be as successful as we had been if we not had had my father really as a mentor for all of us so yeah yeah i just wanted like put another information exclamation mark on that and how important that is so julie can i just do a quick follow up on that you know you've you've i think really brilliantly talked about how it maps you know back home when you're doing this work at work i will just say it maps the other direction too so we see that men who are genuine allies at home meaning they're sharing with their partner equally they're they're asking hey am i really showing up in all of the ways that are required to run our life and you know be parents be partners we know that today the year twenty twenty four in dual career heterosexual couples men are not doing this women are doing double or triple the amount of domestic i would say tom jimmy johnson just wanna point out not in jim's i'm glad i'm like kudos but lunch there's a lot too yeah broke unfortunately that's where ally ship really has to begin and that's sometimes a hard message from in you've gotta be doing this at home to be authentic right so so be a role model and then it maps to the workplace because we find that men who share at home bring this into the workplace they talk about their kids they normalize care giving they don't sneak out the backdoor door when they have something with their family or they need time off they're very public about it and the beauty of that is it gives permission to all of those junior people not just women but men too who are looking to have this normalized i love that point and that comes back to your authenticity about you know how you how you need to show up this is gonna be a little bit of a of a switch and maybe more of like a a business question i know julie will get me back on track but why does our health care systems specifically insurance not always support the behavior change that needs to happen you know jimmy as an eighteen year old would have saved i don't know how many mistakes in my twenties if not thirties and still to this day if i had had somebody like you sent me down maybe twice just in my college years even a high school counselor but why is this not something that you know our society is ready to pay for and understand the roi on this investment whether it is gender equity whether it's racial equity and but just in general leveling this playing field and giving somebody the expertise such as you brad to help people understand that there are ways to serve others and to give them some tactics and trips tricks and support and strength to this wow that's a big question i i assume you're pretty smart you'll figure it out it's like twenty minutes it's it's a it's you know there's so much there i i think you're all you're talking about both role modeling and also kind of the business case you know for this you know i do think that there are men increasingly we talked about that leadership research you know the change we're seeing in men who are getting promoted increasingly i see men who do get it they understand the return on investment they understand why this is good for both them personally and people in their workforce and their company it's good for everybody when we're more inclusive when more more transparent when i as a leader can be really clear about why we're doing this work and then do the work of holding other people accountable to do the work with me we're gonna we have these targets maybe around gender equity and representation of women and leadership so how do i hold people accountable my people managers to help us get to those targets everybody's gotta be on board but that really starts with leadership so i do think we need more leaders role modeling this comfortably articulating their why and the business case we we've got to have that you mentioned it and here's another role modeling piece and it goes back to something you asked about earlier jimmy the the the comfort withholding other people accountable in real time when they step in it when they say something inappropriate there are a couple of ways that i can do that i mean you know if this happens in a meeting and it's egregious i'm sorry i'm gonna hold you accountable right there i'm gonna say i'm gonna disrupt i'm gonna say ouch did you really just say that we don't do that in in this company that's not appropriate i didn't find that funny if it's egregious i'm not gonna let that pass but there are plenty of other times when maybe it's a a really young guy or or an older guy from a different generation likely who well he just he says something and it's not really egregious but it's inappropriate and he doesn't get it he has no idea that he said something that was a little off color or offensive in those cases i kinda do my own calculus and i may decide to go to him later and just say hey brother i'll close the door and do what i call a confrontation i'll i'll just say brother when you said that today a lot of women in the room cringe and i don't think you picked up on that let me tell you why they cringe why you need to get better because i know that's not what you intend you don't intend to offend people but you did i'm sharing this because i care about you and i'd like you to have a chance to be better that's a confrontation i think that's how i can mentor junior junior men it's how i can mentor my boss maybe i'm mentoring up if my boss is getting it wrong i i can hold myself accountable to do a lot of that i just brings me back to a conference jimmy and i were at in somebody from stage did something and everybody just was like oh gosh did he just say that and it was it was like a gender equity conference and somebody said something that just felt like oh my god i can't believe we all just heard that and everybody just felt so uncomfortable so we didn't know him so it wasn't our responsibility to say something him but i hope somebody did but you know brad i'm thinking a lot about i keep coming back to generations right so thinking about my daughters are just entering the workplace and they're you know men that they've grown up with and i'm curious how you kind of see this gen z you know kind of twenty two to twenty seven and this next generation coming up i feel like they may be experiencing all this quite differently what are you seeing different in the new phases in the workplace yeah really great question and and yes i am seeing differences and i think there's good data to support that so i think younger generation folks gen z others they they are entering the workplace with different expectations more of them have seen less traditional parenting models right in in their own homes either they have single parents or dual career parents so they have different expectations about how this should go personally and at work they want i'll just talk about junior men gen z men gen z men want to be more engaged caregivers they wanna be more involved fathers but then they show up in the workplace which in some in some cases and professions is this cal traditional workplace right if you're a dude we expect you in your chair five days a week you know ten hours a day and there's not much flexibility and that's just how we continue to do business so they run into that brick wall and then end up really frustrated and dis and they're either gonna leave there's gonna be high attrition or they're gonna put up with that and be really i think unhappy but let's also remember that you know i don't know if he either of you have read the book pro top by emily cheng he just gave me a good idea of a you know holiday together me right right pro you know this is a random ask is that like is that like a parallel universe to zoo top so yeah yeah i don't know i don't know bro is a deep dive into the experience of women in the tech culture in silicon valley which as you know is populated by a lot of young men right code it is one of the most awful environments in a lot of companies you know the the kinds of sexism and egregious harassment that that women can encounter in a lot of those spaces is is awful so we can't just assume that having a younger generation of men in the work place is gonna be the solution if those men don't have good role models if they don't have senior men holding them accountable showing them how to do respectful workplace relationships the right way we've gotta be really careful about that so i back to your point jimmy we we gotta see men modeling this we we need to see senior men who hold junior men accountable and role model show them the way you're here utopia is cartoon movie about animals getting loose so i was joking that this is not a cute and c book from it is the other side it is the opposite unfortunately yeah yeah yeah for sure can you talk a little bit more you're talking about how these role models are crucial and role modeling i usually believe falls under mentoring yep in a way and more of this kind of like diffuse mentoring it's not a direct mentoring but you mentioned earlier that sponsor as a role is hard to un tie or un t from mentoring can you talk more about that because at au we often have to help our organizations we work with understand the differences in how they wanna define mentoring coaching sponsoring because when it's kind of like a hey you'll just help each other it becomes very messy and productivity and on outcomes goes down and also the relationships start to fa we found because people don't know when they're supposed to show up how they're supposed to show up and they're they're not sure how to like really be with each other because in the end we're human beings we should be so sponsor and mentoring how how do you tease that out yeah yeah yeah it's a great question and i i think you know sometimes we get really tied up in semantics and you know what what awards mean and if we don't carefully define them we get ourselves into trouble pretty quickly i will just i'll tell you dave and i do a lot of mentor training we do a lot of sponsor training and and we help we've helped organizations launch both sponsor programs and mentor programs and i think when organizations do that it can be valuable because they're really operationally defining for those mentors or sponsors what they want the outcomes to be so that's that's the value of doing it that way being very clear so often in a sponsor program you know you'll have the the junior person identified as pro a and and the marching orders are really clear our targets maybe it's around gender equity are to get more women into significant leadership roles by the year twenty thirty and so this program is designed to help us with that therefore what we need you to do are these things we want you to be her raving fan we want you to look for opportunities for her we want you to network her and part of the assessment of effectiveness is gonna be how far she goes in the company in the next five years that becomes really clear to me as a sponsor in that program and i appreciate that okay it's not just about being nice to her which women get too much of i'm gonna be her raving fan and and i'll always be trying to insert her name into conversations about promotions or you know other opportunities around mentoring i see it defined differently right you know we we wanna keep this person in the company maybe she if if it's a gender program we wanna make sure that she has a sense of inclusion and belonging we want her to understand kind of the hidden curriculum in the company we want her to have somebody to go to to talk to when the going gets tough maybe in those first few years so we'd like you to show up relational and be a terrific sounding board provide guidance provide teaching maybe a bit of coaching but the task is different now could that person also do some sponsoring sure we're not gonna forbid you from doing that but that but that's not really necessarily part of what the design of this program is i will just tell you in real life if it's not a formal program that's defined as mentoring sponsoring i think wonderful mentors or you know the especially the longer i get to know you and the more i admire you is my men tea of course these little you know thought bubbles over my head are gonna be like wow i had to recommend her for this or she would be great i'm gonna bring this up with her in our next mentoring conversation hey there's this this stretch assignment or this opportunity or this new job and i thought of you would it be okay if i put your name in for it to recommended you so i think mentors can always be a att to those opportunities too i love it if i could try to summarize because that was a lot my full takeaway was a sponsor is about bringing women up or an individual up to leadership whereas mentor is more about retaining individuals through feelings of community in belonging i think so you know there's so much there with mentoring i mean affirmation you know encouragement you mentioned role modeling i think that's a big piece of it you know role modeling work life integration there there's so many pieces to that but yes i i think overall that's kind of the the marching order if it's if if we're really trying to separate mentoring and sponsoring gotcha and then i think my my last question and then i i hope and julia i'm gonna let you take us home that is also what i heard was when i asked my question about health care insurance and you said well really how do i hold people accountable like and so i was saying what's the business case to have our health care system see the roi and wanna get out in front of this and have people invest earlier i heard that we need people to act with their votes in our democracy tell our elected leaders that gender equity and racial equity equity in general we need to have these policies passed in laws we need to have our elected officials putting these laws on and bills into congress and getting them passed so there are clear ratios just like you know when we have like a certain amount of contracts need to go in in in areas we need to have say also those contractors to go to companies that have these certain leadership positions etcetera so that's what i heard i'm not sure if that's exactly what you meant but i i really like that comment and i will start repeating it yeah no no i'm a huge fan of equity and health care and and funding and let you know my last note about that point jimmy as you know we let's there's no secret there right now all of us who do work in diversity equity and inclusion are facing headwind right there's political headwind there's all the kinda anti woke language and kind of political action out there here's a moment you know i think for courage right if if you're a leader in any of these organizations you have an opportunity to show up courageous and not be deter by that because as you said there's an roi and it's not just the business case it's just the right thing to do right there's a moral case to this as well so you can't let some of those political headwind keep you from continuing to engage it's always it's always the back and forth things there's progress there's back there's progress is so i think we're in actually a great time for this too and giving us a chance to continue to get better better organized over the next time our moment comes will be we'll be ready for it but honestly brad i just really wanted to thank you for this work it's really meaningful and it is really exciting to see the research behind all of this and i am excited to see it continue through the next generations and how continues to evolve and yeah i just really wanted to say thank you for this it's been just really meaningful getting to hear a lot about this work so we will look forward to staying in touch and staying connected i know jimmy has one last little bit for us so yeah i the these these aren't necessarily questions brad this is my last last question but we like to do a little rapid fire word association at the end with some of our favorite terms which we've already teased out quite a bit but i'm gonna ask you to reply with just one word back to another word that i say so this is our verbal warsaw test speaking to us psychologist so when i say the word mentor you say collaborator oh how about men gosh this may sound like a weird word but sponge mh love that we never had that poor how about sponsor raving fan that's do words sorry now it it's a hyphen that's one word we're good and how about coach encourage i like it and then this is a question that sometimes a bit hard to tie down but i love it when sometimes it clicks which is we like the think of ways to really encourage a vulnerable and authentic conversation and a symbol for that is book club and the book is the tal that brings people together unlocks conversation and yeah i'm heather just went to a book club last night it was all it was two and a half hours of which less than half was about the book so the book really unlocks this ability to communicate openly do you have one that maybe you use whether it's in your office you know people talk about you know here's the talking stick sometimes and that's like like a classic tool for this but do you have kind of like a real like token as a way to physically unlock vulnerable conversation that's really interesting i do have a book that immediately came to mind so i should probably just mention it now it's it's specific to my profession teaching but the book is called the courage to teach and you mentioned authenticity i mean i think anyone would benefit from this but here is a master teacher who has written a book about all of the things that professors are anxious about and question themselves about and and how we can be most effective when we show up non defensive and openly about some of those anxieties in the classroom so courage to teach i think would be it i think that's actually relevant for both of us yeah yeah fantastic good good brad thank you it was wonderful to spend the time with you we'll definitely put links in the show notes to your book and to your website and your linkedin and we really hope to stay in touch thanks so much so can i tell you something jimmy yes when i first encountered brad which i did on linkedin and i was a little like what's this guy do why is he so passionate about supporting women in the workplace so that's actually one the reasons why i reached out because i would just really wanted to meet him and hear more because to a thousand percent it is very exciting to hear somebody like brad talking about how important this is and getting out there talking like white man a white man but i was a little this to be honest oh how did you try to find vera ferocity of intentions you're using very big words today so i'm glad to hear my coffee i really just i would just wanted to meet him you know i like when you you're kind of dubious then you meet somebody and then you're like my suspicions are validated but i wasn't really suspicious i was just really curious so i have to say getting a chance to meet him hearing his story his connection with his sister being in the navy which is a space i know nothing about and seeing how that played out and why that was important to him and then his research at the end of the day he is you know a professor he's a phd is a researcher so hearing about what he learned through the research and how that really changed him i think completely validated for me why he was doing it and made me even more excited that he is doing it amen of that my takeaway was you cannot have as an individual in an over represented group me as a white man in a lot of workplaces i can't have a gu yeah it matters to me i wanna show up it can't be some kind of t response you need to really understand why and get excited about that coming back to a key au principle vision you need to understand where you wanna be what kind of organization you wanna be a part of what relationships you as a man want to have with women or you as a man wanna have with other men so you can collaboratively support women and if you don't have that why and have some energy behind it you are gonna gu and it is gonna be uncomfortable so it's better to do the gu and the uncomfortable work ahead of time maybe in what might feel like a safer place with another man talking through you know why have we for whatever reason marginalized women historically in workplaces in organizations yeah and having the real honest conversation like what are the challenges what are you you up against i i think he gave some really great examples of ways that you know to support and ways that it might be uncomfortable to support and what is the actual you know i think sometimes people just like don't know what the right thing to do is and to his point like if you are a senior man and you don't have any other men and you suddenly have a young woman who's your men in is in your office with the door closed like that's not gonna look great but if you have always had relationships with men and with women and that you know that's part of your culture that's part of how you show up in your workplace then i think i think sometimes it's just a sphere like doing the wrong thing and if you use your head and you act with good intentions and it's clear what those intentions are and you act fairly across the board then then yeah you're gonna be able to and what he you know shared which we know is like how valuable his life is by having these women in his life and what he's learned both as better employee and as a more effective leader and as a better husband and as a better father and as a better brother etcetera so it goes beyond just the workplace it's not funny because it's too important of a topic to take it lightly but it is the same repeat best practices that we hear not just in mentoring but in any kind of relationship building now if you're showing up authentically you're genuinely curious and you repeat these actions you don't do it as you said julie just in one special instance with one individual you have not discomfort but conversations where you do challenge yourself and you grow from that you stress not just stress but productive stress you're gonna have more powerful relationships you're gonna be supporting people because there's not gonna be thought about why should i or should i not it's just oh you're on my team we work together why can't we get somewhere further faster together totally and it's such an interesting time understatement of the world and seeing how again like a couple of years ago this would be like kind of an obvious conversation like yeah of course like of course we need more women and representative of course we more women than in the workplace even when we started this podcast which was you know a little couple years ago it was that was obvious but clearly the kind of work that brad doing is even more important than it was a couple years ago and to continue to sound that drum beat that change has happened but there's of course so much more change that needs to be made so i'm happy that brad is out there his book is phenomenal and it's really exciting to see his research which of course nothing backs up conversation and statements better than research and i am very excited to follow along and see where his organization evolves and nothing backs up conversation better than research and that means doing your own research which is going out and having some of these interactions especially as a man in an over represented group yeah i'm speaking to you our listeners remember what brad said where he said there's two ways to hold people accountable in real time one is the disruption if something occurs that is egregious you can say ouch i'm not gonna let that pass and you have to stand up and be an active participant and do it in public and it's uncomfortable for everybody but it's important and you're not gonna get it right every time but it's more important that you do it than don't be active participant and two if it's inappropriate maybe instead of calling somebody out which could push to an interaction that may not lead to growth for that individual you can have a care confrontation and say hey when you said that today a lot of women in the room cringe i know it's now what you intended but i'm sharing this because i care about you so let's talk about it man to man and figure out how we can support our teammates better in the future love it yeah that was a great advice and and the more that you share that with others too the more other people feel comfortable with that and that that's just part of how the organization works it's part of your values it's great great advice and if part of your values you won't just have it in your organization you'll have parity at home as well yes after parity easier said well done yes yes yes thank that's for sure okay and remember if you're a men you're a sponge thanks brad thanks brad hog out wow you've made it this far and we thank you hopefully you enjoyed our episode and discovered new ways to bring more authentic connection into your mentoring relationships wanna tell him more jimmy be an au with us visit our website for the best interactive mentoring content at au mentors dot us share our podcast with someone you care about like and subscribe and yes really you following our show and writing a review it's a big deal your actions provide us with the resources to continue our undefeated une uncovered prize winning productions we welcome questions and suggestions via email high at augmented dot us or on social with our handle at hq we are most active and available on linkedin and youtube shout out in earnest thank you to our intrepid producer e cad we appreciate you augmented out see

hey we're au mentors and we build through mentoring i'm julie i'm jimmy and today we are joined by catherine dim president and ceo of the greater boston food bank and a trail laser in the world of food security catherine shares deep insight on being a leader both as a ceo and board member and the power of making sure people can feel how much you care and we get a university of san francisco basketball story thrown in here we go catherine dim we are so excited to have you on today how are you doing i'm well thank you thanks for having me yeah no i was so excited about this conversation we have a chance to meet before you are at the president and ceo of the greater boston food depository and i have just had such a great time hearing more and more about your experience and we are thrilled to get a chance to deep dive hear more about your background and advice that you have for people coming up in the world well thank you first of all i love your guys name augment mentors i think that it's clever and it's all just you know to augment mentoring and how important mentors do play in the lives of ourselves and for those that we do touch whether each way but you know greater boston food bank i wouldn't be there without a number of people along the way and when you have the opportunity to reflect back in your work it's a wonderful way to be aware of all those intersections where people made a difference in your life tell us more we love specifics yeah well you so so nothing you know formal right now at the greater boston food bank we have the opportunity we have mentoring opportunities for folks we make them available and the one thing that we do encourage is reverse mentoring especially for our executive leaders you know to be more in touch with generational differences we have six generations at the greater boston food bank and that's well quite quite an opportunity to try to quote communicate and quote because every generation has a different way of of seeing information gathering it feeling it what's important prioritization all those things so the reverse mentor opportunity has been very good for our leaders and we encourage each executive leader to step out of their area and go get you know so to have our cfo as an example have someone from the warehouse or your coo which is in operations have someone from fundraising or marketing or finance or some completely other way to get out of it and to at least be a couple of generations different i know for myself that was very valuable to have the perspective because i would say hey we're gonna communicate this thing out to team gb b well what do you think and they give a perspective and i'd be like that's very interesting i would not have thought about that would not have set it up that way i would not you know have have brought that into the you know the communication or the delivery of the communication and so i found it very helpful so that's the way we do it at gb b and i'm always surprised that people don't take advantage of it more and so we have to do a lot better job at communicating it so that's the current situation in my earlier years you know i i wouldn't have thought about it as mentoring you know in my early career i would think about it as a teacher or a guide or someone i learned a great deal from and then over the horizon of my career that word mentor became much more formal much more acceptable it meant something you know where you might have had people passing on information or sharing or guiding if you were fortunate and i love that it's more formal for the word at least that there are programs that there are programs with youth and programs with with individuals like elders and kids and ways in which to do storytelling or helping people just understand they're not you know c like this stuff happens when your career you know they are actually c though but you know what i that's being like the that that's gonna happen you know you're not gonna get everything you want and maybe you're not ready for that promotion or have you thought about this or that in your career and so i was fortunate early on to be a leader very young and grew up in a family business i was a fourth child so we always had a job and we always had responsibility and that you know you know when you have to hire and fire people or help people along and you're the twelve year old you know in that so that forces you into it and then when i was young i was able to start the san francisco food bank in nineteen seventy nine and so i became an executive director very young and that also then led to meeting the help and guidance of others and trying to learn from my mistakes you know which is one of the hardest things as a as a leader especially because you're supposed to be the cheerleader leader you're supposed to know at all you're supposed to be able to do things and but i had some some some great people along the way early in my career both men and women and and then as things moved forward in my career then the formal mentoring you know i think it's interesting i'd be curious from you all how you see the difference between coaching and mentoring because coaching is like you know everybody's a coach but wants to be a coach everybody wants to tell you wants to you know make it their profession they transition from there corporate life coaching and it's really it's fascinating you know when people wanna be in life coach well i i mean catherine in town we now have you know the best coach in the nation joe is wow right what what an amazing outcome look i've always been a basketball fan i play basketball in college so i i didn't like my coach that was probably i like but but yeah amazing story right in terms of his age the way he looks at things how he places the players as the most important part and their health and and well being and it's that whole emphasis again on on empathy and awareness and whether you are the mentor the men or whether you are the supervisor or the one being supervised little leader you know empathy clearly become a far more important part of leadership and at least on my horizon that i've seen over the time but we do have right now the best basketball coach in the world right because they are world champions world champions and and second youngest coach to be a world champion other than bill russell also for the south the yeah and bill russell he and i we come from the same college the university of san francisco and so we had bill russell bill cart right we had casey jones that's it that's all we've got out of us f i and which is the university of san francisco and in such bill when he was in town and alive obviously and he was available to people and showed up i mean i i would always he always knew i was a graduate i told him once and if he ever saw me he would always say hey because the it's the dawn the us have don see what would it's always great to meet to don on the east coast because there aren't very many of us and i'm like no they're they aren't because they all stayed on the west coast that's amazing i now have full goosebumps any bill russell story oh you know else we had we had bill kart right he was in my class so yeah that's a lot of champions bill bill and casey oh yeah i that's great there were a lot of them and you know so it's it was just a fun time but yeah but i was you know i was a young woman it was a time growing up title line had just come in and so part of that is you know where you women were not yet given that equal status in sports but they were starting to be able to go to college you know on scholarships whether it be golf for softball or tennis or basketball or you know whatever it might be and now it's really we've really seen that explosion in this last year of where women's sports are in much more front and center you know just i love even seeing here the nba here are the games you know over the next three or four days you now see the women's w nba listed there as well so bravo you know and that's part of what if you're a woman leader mean it's one more thing that you're gonna have to manage through you know i can say look i never worked in a corporation that wasn't a not for profit and i remember one of my early mentors in western mass and i remember having lunch with him about my career and he and i both agreed i said i just don't really think i'm cut out for corporate you know like going into the you know this corporation or that corporation he's like no catherine that's not good for you said okay that's he's like you were better suited in this you know genre by the nature of you being a young leader and you're always gonna lead and so therefore it's gonna be difficult for you to sit inside an organization and follow unless you have somebody that you can really aspire to or learn from and and so i stayed in food banking so from western mass sorry from san francisco to western massachusetts then to boston well i i'll answer your question quickly about difference between coaching and mentoring the perspective of augment manners is that the coaches get paid and mentors not though i'd say the similar tie is that the emotional investment is supposed to be there and the good coaches will still have that a mentor they'll get paid but they still share in the highs or the lows of their men or vice versa or whether it's he'll reverse mentor interesting and then how do you put in place things like big brothers and big sisters or where you take on a a younger person to help guide i mean to me i'm not sure what that is maybe it's in a category by itself because it's not coaching correct really it really is an av vacation which is what you're saying to me you're giving the description between the difference between vocation and and any money and no money and doing it for a particular reason so one thing i really highlight is the benefits of mentoring obviously not the financial benefits but emotional benefits and you know i'm as i'm sure there's a lot of trained that you've done when you see somebody that you've been having conversations with for a stretch of time who's come to you and say hey i really wanna be a leader and you see them rise into their leadership and you see them succeed and they come back and say catherine remember when you told me x y and z i remember that and yeah i mean what you know what better pain is that's that's pretty awesome i mean it doesn't happen that often but i do appreciate when it does i mean i'll tell you what what i find a a a disappointing truth is i'll have i say unequivocally women reach out to me i i'm having difficulty finding a man in my history that that asked for this meaning hey catherine i mean now it's linkedin i see on linkedin or somebody meets you you give a you give a talk or they've seen you present somewhere and they're like i'm really thinking about making this change from profit to nonprofit i'm not really sure how but would you know would there be any chance you would talk with me and i am almost a hundred percent of the time i'll say yes and sure pierre you know make make time put it back on them if you wanna talk with me you gotta chase me and and make that happen and so let's say there's a high percentage of those at least ninety percent of those that do follow through to make the appointment and come to know i've always say you i'm happy to meet with you but you have to come to greater boston food bank and we'll make a time and they come and i sit with them you know for an hour and we go through what is it they wanna be like let's say they've they've been in you corporate and they wanna be a chief operating officer and they've never been a chief offering officer and then so like how can i how do i do that and of course i'm making this level of a higher level of compensation and will i make that compensation because i wanna support women and support women's ability to be leaders and to make that transition and the sad truth is when we're done i'll say here's my card here's my telephone number you know how to find me and let me know i can help you less i'm i don't don't don't be shocked less than five percent ever follow up with me again mh ever why do you think of that i i don't know i don't know because sometimes i'm like you wow you've been given a gift at least that's my perspective of like i could help you because i'll say if you run into a job that you're interested in send it to me because i could tell you like that's a great organization that's a really good fit for you that's a leader that i know or i would also say to them run away that's a toxic organization don't go there but i i'm just surprised and i have no idea how many of those women have actually well i have a couple of that i'm aware of but not many actually made the change you know where they said okay i am going to move we have plenty of folks at greater boston food bank who have done that who have come and want to move from profit to nonprofit and they come into the organization and offer you know really good insight they have because they have a whole other orientation from working in companies that sixty five thousand people or global companies or thirty thousand people or even five thousand people and we have a hundred and fifty people you know so the opportunity to influence or share is significant but i'm always surprised about that and i i don't know the why because for me i'm opportunistic and maybe that's part of the the the driver because that has driven me well well maybe not everybody is opportunistic or they decide to stay you know so they decide not to make the move and i'm curious if you're saying it i loved what you first started with the conversation about reverse mentoring because term the term is you know sort of a little bit up and down in terms of what it actually really means but it's really about building those connections between between you know sort of gen z yes really you know young millennials and then those of us who are more advanced our careers and have done things a certain way what would you say are and maybe this is a little bit of the issue right you're like no i just like invested in these relationships and i kept showing up over time that's maybe a little bit of the change in your reverse mentoring that either you've done you know yourself or within your organization what are some of the key things to keep in mind for working with gen z younger millennials in the workplace like what would you say or some of the nuggets either that you've learned or how you may you and your executive team act differently with them yeah i think the the one that prizes very quickly is they're not wrong i mean often when they tell you something you know because you get very set in your ways you know because of a a way you've been trained that the way you've come into an organization or the position that you have and and so i think the most important thing is to listen to them like why would you say that you know what why would you want me to do it this way versus that way or why would why are you know where where is that and what's the benefit of that and so i have found that that the perspective is gonna be different than mine and so you have to have an open mind to come in and say okay there's value in your difference there's value in the way you see the world i may not agree with it you know i i may not like well that's gonna be uncomfortable for me as a leader to judge and to do that like that's not you know where i would start and know perhaps but that's going to be where i'm gonna end up and so i think sometimes the path that a a younger person sees or what's important to them if you can get through that as letting go of your of your own sort of biases as a leader and that it's it look it's not easy i'm so saying that that's a that takes a a more a seasoned leader to be willing to look at their own own leadership and i i know that from myself whether it's using tools or feedback or three sixties or input or annual reviews or all of those pieces that people see you in particular ways that you may not see yourself and so that's an important piece and i so i think that reverse mentor can see you in a way that you don't see yourself and if they're honest with you then that's and you are able and i i mean this in you know that there's some criticism right there like you know you may wanna be warren pathetic catherine okay what do you mean i'm not empathetic you know i to see all these things that i do for this organization you see all these that like don't that's a empathy that no that's not what people see so a lot of it is optics a lot of it is first impressions and i that's where i think they're there's a real value because they're gonna come at you as a leader or see you as a leader in a way that your peers don't kevin how do you make or how do you assist those people in feeling comfortable enough mh them to actually share what they see and not put it through you know a rose colored lens yeah no it's a no it's a i think trust trust is one of our values at bader boston food bank and i look that that's the biggest one i think it's what from if you have the trust then you can get to respect and you can get to so many other things but i think you just have to show i'll use my my own that i remember just as an example on a communication let's just say at a town hall and there was some advice on how to approach it and so the town hall occurred i took that person's advice and then we followed up afterwards and it was a way to say because i think that's where you build trust to say wow that worked your advice come commit so to bring it back to that you gotta be back to say okay that was that was insightful i would not have seen that i would have not done that and i would have not expected to see what you almost predicted in that way so it doesn't mean that all team members are trust each other because i think it's one of the again one of the hardest things because people often come at what's what's good for me not me catherine d model but for themselves you know you're not doing enough for me and especially in this post covid workforce it's a it's a it's a different need it's a different way to approach the work place we have folks who've never been in workplace setting mh and know so you're starting all over from just workplace etiquette you know when you there what you say how you approach something how you clean up your dishes after to yourself you know no you're not home can put the mom mom is not here talking the dishwasher we're goodness sake so look i come from a a service industry we haven't grown up in the restaurant business so some of those things are always surprising to me of younger generations but i think again they're outliers right we isn't that one focus or one perspective is is the right one it may be more evolved or you know and so part of being a leader is being open to those so i think that is how you can build some some trust of it and you have to hold that confidence you know and confidentiality i apologize and and with that person you know that that these conversations are confidential you know or at least the the learnings so but it's been a it was effective for me and it was effective you know for other leaders and see i see it still because i looked the two things if you don't mind me jump in i just wanna make sure we'd like pun it because it really stuck with me and something i hadn't really heard before was that idea of in the kind of reverse mentoring which is really having those frank conversations this is uncomfortable like that is such a a really important truth i think for mentors to be able to hear especially as they're gaining that kind of conversation and the transparency that i think and to you know your point about younger generation they don't have the same well i can never say that to my boss you know they had they don't have the same like oh that's like you know they're like no here's actually i'm gonna tell you exactly that i love it and the second is looping back what a great point don't forget like even as you're saying about the men that have come to you over time and had those conversations if they had just looped back and been like hey catherine i just wanted to let you know you know maybe a year from now this is where i landed i didn't end up transitioning but like really happy or i figured it out or whatever are miserable and so miserable or you know whatever and also say like what you said which is so powerful you looped back with those people who gave you that advice and said thank you so much for that here's how i used it i just posting something on linkedin talking about you know kind of those opportunities to take ten minutes you know not every day whatever every couple of days just like loop back with people just check in and be like hey you know i know we talked a couple weeks ago i just wanna let you know it's like doesn't take that much time but it's so meaningful so i think those are two good points i know we've never talked about on the podcast before so i just wanted to you know kinda of put yeah i'm glad to call it out because i think the you can't how can you grow right i mean part of this is changing behavior and whether it's a person you're mentoring changing their behavior and their position about how they address something or you on a reverse mentor changing your behavior because behaviors learned and we've we we get entrenched you know in it and we have expectations and generational expectations i mean i grew up with going work every day with a high work ethic right you hear that well i mean you were firing people when you were twelve like how know i don't is people have you know i have a strong work ethic they don't have a strong worth i'm not sure it's the work ethic i just think it's the you know the approach to work it's a whole other way to balance you know work in your life or not balance and even i mean just you know i was i was out walking my dog it was yesterday morning and there was you know group of people coming and but you hear conversations right as people are going and this well and sent to the man oh i don't have i don't have my work email on my personal phone she said that's just a boundary i would never cross and i just think right and i walked i was walking by i'm like oh my god i have my email on all the time as a ceo of an organization so i've gotta learn about it what am i gonna take that off of my you know i was known my and he probably so long exactly because that it will happen right but for this particular person i thought gosh i was curious what role they have in an organization that they were very clear of where that was where in certain positions that's not gonna be the place that you you can go i know you know but no i i have you know visions when i retire i'll i'll take my i'll go throw in the ocean or something and i'll just have a blast that's that vision everything day you're you pull my shoulder out because i like okay with you and there it goes my work phone about because i'll have my personal phone but i but i think those are you know the influence what's important and you know i've had a good fortune of speaking at a lot of graduation and i just did the friedman school actually like this year and i'm of the belief and i think it fits into the work you're doing with augment mentors is that to never underestimate the power you have to influence someone's direction or life and it can be very very very small that causes an enormous change in their lives a pivot a a level of confidence a direction a career whatever they you might need relative to either thinking differently or considerations or support you know in ways that carry them and if i if i use an example of myself it would be this one so when my parents when i was eight years old my parents opened to restaurant and my father was a pretty devout catholic he was came from an immigrant family had nothing dirt poor grandparents couldn't speak english couldn't read or write italian but in any event he taught us a value which was if anyone comes to the backdoor begging for food in exchange for work we are to sit them down in the restaurant and feed them k there's dignity there's access there's so many pieces of that if you break it down it truly wasn't till so that's eight truly wasn't until my late twenties where i went oh that's why i'm in this work yeah security yeah that's why i'm in what where did the hell did that come from you know i thought i was my grandparents farmers in this but it was the value of that lesson of importance that people have dignity and everyone has a right food and no one should have to go wash dishes in order to have a meal and so and so i'm sure that's true for other folks if they were able to break down like how did i did i become a doctor an accountant or you know you know wanted to do be a professional athlete because my parents were maybe or because that was the orientation of my family but the influence of that you know and that's where people have come back that small percentage of folks that have come back and said catherine and i remember speaking with you and i'm so glad that i took your advice and i'm now doing something i love and i'm doing you know this or i'm doing that and but i think often it's probably a high percentage that we don't know that what we stand for or what we've said or what somebody has read or what somebody has seen causes and text exchange you know in people's life and i'm i'm fortunate that i can have multiple stories of people saying that like catherine you said this at a so and so and and i wanted that and so funny how sometimes people say that to me i'm like i said that yeah yeah yeah yeah you're like so i performed i are you sure that was sure i know so i mean if you're a conscious mentor like you're active right and you'll you choose to mentor someone and they or they you know to work in that you're you're having a much more open relationship around learning listening and trying stuff on i mean and i think the the word for me is practice and that you know we we practice to be a good basketball player we practice to be a great singer we practice our guitar we practice but we also practice how we work but i don't know that we use the term like you have to practice that you have to it's a muscle in the same way of how you are in the workplace and how you are consistent in the workplace and it's it's hard i mean i from my perspective as a leader i find it i find it hard because i'm already out the door i'm ten miles ahead of you i know what the end result is i know how to do it i you know i got it and i'm starting with you and i have to go that's interesting stop be be big of weight and that's what i've had to learn as a leader and that's where others have helped me it's not a slowing down but it's it's bringing them along in a way that perhaps i would've have just gone so far and so fast ahead of them that they could never have caught up so that's helped me be a better leader catherine i'm i'm i'm curious about how your leadership perspective and how mentoring has affected you early on or now in all of your board experience you have so much experience sitting on boards outside of the food bank mh and that is one of those areas where you just said you need to work work as practice well it's very hard to practice being on a board because there's just not that many board opportunities and as as more and more boards are becoming more equitable and diverse it's hard more people are being encouraged to become board members but how do they work on that muscle before they get seat at the table so should like what how did mentoring play a role for you in in being a board member bob i've i haven't i haven't thought about that particular question so i appreciate you know asking it i when i i like governance a lot and it's in it's it's not everybody's subject it's not everybody's but it's like governance it's like that's boring or that's like being a lawyer or why would you wanna do that it's just a bunch of you have a tick and time and you're gotta do all these things in this borders right but i find that whole process of enormous interest in terms of it is it's how do you take something from a start to a finish and bring a lot of people along with you because that's also the the process of governing in and whether it's the committee structure or the organizational structure etcetera so i've know i'm because i'm opportunistic that way i'm also an observer and for me it might not have been formal leadership roles or or or mentoring to be on a board but definitely capitalizing on that personal interest and and lots of observations with board and whether it be as as staff or how to work or i you i've taken courses on it etcetera but just try to understand it in learning and as i've been taught whether it be from a board member or a serving on a committee etcetera then you you bring that you know into again your practice in terms of how you might approach something i remember in wanting to do more board work and being work that i could do in my own growth i do remember seeking out folks and having conversation so i'm a big person like go talk to people about this you know like i remember i want we're thinking about it going to law school and i talked to ten women lawyers and every single one of them said don't be a lawyer so every single one of them said no catherine go do something else there's too many lawyers i a lot of like what not to do like don't corporate don't get a lawyer like i like that but that was that was you know that advice in the end you know it was interesting but they were like no don't i had one person say you should really be a dentist there's a lot of opportunity there i'm like i don't wanna be a dentist with one of those women that i went to when i asked the question said the hardest part catherine is the first one and i think that's where a lot of women get disillusioned you know because you have to have the first one and for me that while i served on the boston foundation as an example which was very focused in boston the the the really one for me that's helped provide credibility for me was the federal reserve so getting on to the federal reserve because there's that's it's this is a governing in a body which has autonomy which is fascinating in terms of to itself to and it has two primary objectives one is unemployment and monetary policy and so really looking at driving that down so i learned a great deal but then you're sitting around with others and then you're sitting around and watching and that's where i observed a lot and then the the next opportunity for me was really big opportunity rather have been other or not for profits is fidelity charitable which is a a largest donor advised fund and it's just again you start to get into billions you know and of dollars and really understanding governance processes and it's a little bit different than even though it's a its own unto itself a charitable entity of a five zero one c three it's a very again different and different entity entity have learned a great deal that i've recently been appointed by governor heal to the pension board which is the prem board but is now now we're talking about a hundred and you know five billion dollars you know these are people's future so you you wanna be good with it and that's a whole different process because it's open government in terms of how meetings are done so municipal versus private versus you know profit not for profit but mentors along the way are really for me and watching and and asking questions for me of how i've learned are serving on a committee i think if women in particular have interest to do this kind of work there are now some national organizations that are there to help but a lot of it is very ser and then and to not lose sight of that it you know you may have a particular skill set and accounting background a lawyer and investment those are skills where folks are gonna have certain access the harder for me i you know i'm a been a food banker my whole life i know the food business so that's a different kind of way but i do enjoy it and i enjoy that kind of work and being able to give back but i think for any woman talk to other women that sit on board start to build it because a lot of that is done by a relationship a lot of it is done by relations and that's having those conversations those mentoring conversations and looping back and checking back in and having conversations after you had conversations and yes and and maintaining those relationships yeah and over and over and over again right and that's where it's tiring because you're like i deserve this i should be this you know i'm capable and they're probably you know hundreds of women that could do these things and and that is frustrating because there there's a lot of talent and but the the way to start is really get yourself on a not for profit board and a way for you to grow and start to learn the process you know get on something that has some active governance get on a committee that you're not familiar with you know serve on an audit and investment committee but try to not end up on the events committee because exactly the woman they're like oh do you wanna rent a gala i'm like oh no i'm the last person what you wanted to be planning you know why there's just the guy who just started so i see you're not gonna ask him you're just gonna ask me i got it okay but i think that's very fair fit to point that i mean there's only two letters in the word no and and no and so we have to be comfortable saying them you know and saying no that's the right fit for me or or you know and that's that's that's hard for women because we crack we we will crack i'd say okay sure and and i think that's all part of the the lessons and know in one's life and looking looking back and then tried to look forward of the people around you so with with the boards is there something in particular that somebody gave you advice at one point because you have such a variety of board experiences like is there a quote that still kind of rings in your head i like that mentor over your shoulder where you go back to that line when you're in in these board meetings yes i mean i yes they're like catherine you can do this work i mean that's i love it like you know you can do this work you're you are capable of doing this work you know you are you are qualified to do this work so that's where it really becomes the hustle or the relationship or helping people to see you differently and look they're are all kinds of networks you know where women can thrive whether that be based on phil or experience or you come out of a particular company or people know people you know that happens so that's just a fact and not all of us are in the same circles of of people and so i think that affirmation that you may or may not land on this but it has nothing to do with your skill set and so maintaining some level of of confidence and that do the things that you wanna do you know don't again be sucked into something as you've already noted you know that that is not your area or does not fit and it may be that that opportunity passes you buy it's just that you've gotta go find other things you know for that's really good advice i think sometimes it's easy to feel like you're it's an honored to be nominated right so somebody's asked you and you're like oh you know then you're like i know if i'm the right fit but maybe to your point getting that confidence and then maybe having a look i always from my you know looking at the pipeline of my own board or when i sit on a a governance committee you know like i i mean i said on the chair the governance committee at the boston foundation and i can look and say yeah that know i brought that person in that committee was that time and and then watch them over the next you know years you know go through their their time in a in a term and there's that like feels good right the you had that's that opportunity to influence in a very quiet way people say oh so so was just a terrific leader catherine do you know them and i'll be well actually yes i was on them i've chair the governance committee that brought them into you know that board and they'll be like oh i didn't know because years have passed so sometimes you see your work many many years later and can you wait for it hopefully you know or see the again it's the power of that in it's at that moment at that intersection to cause an effect change that's lasting i mean one of the things i've been talking a lot about and you would understand this from your work in in food insecurity your past work is we have to move from crisis to durable change yeah from prices to durable change yes and that's you know like when when i think about a legacy or i'm gonna look back are there things that i can feel good about putting into place you know like the hunger health collaborator i feel good about that right and you've had some time with that like it's on its own it's been birthed there goes you know and it's gonna create become its own entity until itself whatever it it will be and you've done that in your companies and you've done that you now have augment mentors and you're pulling this thing together and it will take on a life of its own so to not lose sight of of those pieces but i i really do enjoy the board work and i i'm looking for something now so i'm kinda of back in the because i've ended a couple of things so and and i have a couple more years on fidelity charitable and you know because of governance you you sunset appropriately but you have to just you know i appreciate it as i started to say in my own board when people say no i'm not the right fit catherine or i can't be the best board member so i need to step off or i've taken on a new role i'm really not giving you what you need i look for busy people i look for people who get stuff done i look for folks who have you know the the right sort of moral compass on these things because a lot of times for boards especially not for profits they're putting in positions of judgment and and responsibility you know in terms of growing an organization and and what is their real role and and when you're on the management side your job is to keep them out of management it's like go away so up and when you're on the board side your job is you know to do your job and to not get involved in management but mentors sir i just and might appreciate your work because i think the there's probably more people that could be involved or have something to offer or have a perspective or an experience and the challenge is helping the person that wants to be mentored focus on what that is yeah what the vision setting their vision is that what it is that yeah so that's what we talk about versus your goal you know it's like what's your goal it's like really what's your vision because we feel mentors are really there to support you on growing your vision so our first two principles are vision and road roadmap so really setting that vision for yourself how do you see yourself and working with your mentor on developing like that path what does that look like what are the stops along the way and how can a mentor show up for you and support you on that and carry you to whatever that is right and then it might be you need something else right because look i was trained as a process theologian and my undergraduate work and continue to be interested which is essentially essentially that you keep becoming right that you in process theology it's this concept of of un becoming and continuing to grow and continuing to become something and that you know that you you sort of have the blip in your life or that you just sort of grow and then you you might go this way for a while but that you you evolve and it's never over and that's why in process theology and catholicism resurrection or death is just another transition it's just an you know it's just another thing that just keeps going but that's that was a whole other life but but that had played into my into the way i think as a leader which is this is a process it's unfolding it has it doesn't some things have a beginning and an end and then they change and this is all part of also leading my my team which is we're not going back covid over we have to go we've gone through it and now we're gonna go beyond it and so we have to go really you know instead of thinking about you know attracting and retaining talent as an example we're talking about building the workforce for the future okay that's very different focus it's where are we going and they'll need a lot of guidance and they'll they'll need a lot of mentoring for the future for the next five or ten years for sure amen to that catherine i love to ask a very short a set of rapid fire association questions just for words i'd love to hear what like immediately bubbles to mind from you so when i say the word mentor you say valuable how about men need to learn sponsor awesome yeah that's so and lastly coach careful careful and then you you you really spoke a bit about you know how to make trust in a mentoring relationship and how important that is to really make it a valuable experience is there a specific symbol or maybe something i mean i i know you like inviting people to your office meeting person at the food bank haven't experience it is there something maybe even beyond that where you're like i want the person to see this either about me or a physical location we sometimes use symbol of like the book and book club you know people people go to book club because of the book supposedly but really the book is just opening up this breadth of conversation and share trust yeah so it's the tool in your mind sure it's the it's a it's the tool it's a means by which you can have that expression or maybe meeting new people or you know whatever whatever get owner fear whatever it might be i i get that i think when in the it really was more convenience by having them come to better boston food drinks for me it's like you're asking me to help you and so therefore come find me and you chase me i don't chase you and i always say i don't chase you you want something from me you've got show me you you want it then that then i'll respond because you took some courage to do that i don't have sort of that in my fully baked mind i think that that where the opportunity comes for me is that if i've met you then your and your responsive you know in terms of your follow up of things then i'm gonna be more likely to help you and to you know say okay this is a person because that that deserves the opportunity to grow you know look i get lots of calls for people that you know where you write a letter for this person well who are they you know i don't have know and the answer usually is no i don't i don't know them so you can't use my value for your benefit if you haven't sort of done some work but i i think also the reason why coming to the food bank for me with others is when they're very interested in this going from profit to not for profit question that they need to see that not for profits are not these stupid little rink dink organizations that they're large and active and have every issue that occurs in a for profit corporation that they are they're creative and that you know i always distinguish two things are only different in my mind between profit and not for profit one is they're incorporation how you actually what are the rules taxes rule is it taxes correct and so you know they so if this one is a a for profit corporation it needs capital well so to not for profit corporations it's called fundraising they need capital so it's the same thing but how you one might get a deduction might one might get a credit you know they're just they're just different ways but they both need the same things and the other is the creativity so the for profit often has so much resource that there people just given the money to spend and in art role that resource comes really at hard work so you wanna be incredibly careful how you spend it and you have to also be really resourceful in the things that you do so i think it helps people see that there are in massachusetts we have thirty five thousand not for profit well that's wild about ten thousand of them are inactive but you know some of those are family foundations again you put it all together churches colleges hospitals universities family foundations organizations so they're all a part of that and so that's where people can can make that transition but right i think it helps to see the organization and then to say oh like well this is what i thought because they're not these inadequate incapable places they are places where you can cause and effect change by coming from a completely different experience catherine i can't believe we're out of time i know jimmy and i could talk could listen to you for hours you have given us so many new things that we had not heard before so we really appreciate that thank you so much for your time julie what of fantastic conversation with katherine i feel so lucky to have met her and what catherine doesn't know is that i have met her before oh you have i didn't know that either oh you have back in somewhere in the early to mid nineties my school volunteer at the boston in area food bank and i believe that's how my first girlfriend saw me as useful and productive because i moved a lot of boxes so thanks guys like that guy can move some food and it likes to volunteer oh wow i mean i do two food banks can be if food banks can be a a place of you know volunteering is nice way to meet people maybe not just in high school but yeah i i i don't know if the more of our stories is that food banks are an easy act but maybe for another time different podcast i do think though there was a huge takeaway that was powerful from what catherine said that has been pepper my brain since our conversation which was the challenge for profits is to move from a low level consistent crisis to durable change and i think that that that that thought process is actually critical for any organization and really any individual within the organization because it's about the transformation and the outcome it's not necessarily just about the tactics so i know we talk a lot about that what is the actual transformation that happens in let's say a i'm entering relationship it's not just about the program and sticks and throwing people together and when did you have coffee and what did you say or what have you it's really about where did you start from and where did you end up so for her perspective which is so valuable in any organization for sure especially in a non nonprofit what the ultimate goal is is not just just get more food in front of people it is to solve food security and it's a much bigger outcome than just the day in and the day out totally and it shows a need for vision an aspirational place where you're gonna get to and also understanding that you can't get caught in the day to day min mnuchin which i thought was convinced by catherine's comment about the amount of young women especially who reach out to her for advice and you can tell that katherine all about durable change because she responds to every single one and says sure come on by my office happy to meet in person and you know the wonderful part about catherine is that she's actually accepting all these she's she's ready for it i mean just phenomenal yet so that's the durable change that catherine wants to see yet people are so often in this low level cons didn't state of crisis that she says only about five percent actually follow up and book the meeting yeah because they may not actually feel like they have enough to talk about or they don't have a presenting problem or they're not about kind of the long term relationship and the durable change it happens in those relationships yeah i was surprised to hear that too especially you know boston a small community and the nonprofit world is small so i think investing in those relationships and continuing those relationships is so valuable which she obviously is as well and i have to say i was really impressed with her from the standpoint of just being a trail and being part of the this world for so long so many years my mother law's started a nonprofit in boston in the seventies and eighties and also is quite a trail blazer she's no longer with us but the similarities of being oftentimes the only woman in the room oftentimes having to ask money from large corporations and places where you have to go in with a lot of confidence and the lessons that she has some which she shared with us and of course with her other men and her teams which she continues to share and she continues to listen which i also loved about her that she said how important it is to not only tell people what she knows but to hear what they have to say which leads right into reverse mentoring which was a theme she brought up throughout how catherine uses reverse mentoring within the food bank to cascade her vision and her strategy for the organization and it comes back to this basic foundational advice that au gives which is if somebody says i welcome a meeting take the meeting and for reverse mentoring to succeed you must empower and have that base level trust throughout the organization where young people are ready to say oh you accepted a meeting i will come yes and i'll will ask questions and i will show up and i'll be ready to to participate yeah i felt like there were so many great things here i am excited to see how catherine evolves knowing that she's been doing this for quite some time and where she goes next and i am really grateful that we got to spend his time with catherine and i look forward to following up with her and hopefully getting to see her again watch out catherine uber email to come we'll see who gets me we'll see who gets the office meeting first to race race i'll see you at the finish line thank you catherine au out au out wow you've made it this far and we thank you hopefully you enjoyed our episode and discovered new ways to bring more authentic connection into your mentoring relationships wanna tell him more jimmy be an au with us visit our website for the best interactive mentoring content at au mentors dot us share our podcast with someone you care about like and subscribe and yes really you following our show and writing a review it's a big deal your actions provide us with the resources to continue our undefeated une uncovered prize winning productions we welcome questions and suggestions via email high at au augmented dot us or on social with our handle at hq we are most active and available on linkedin and youtube shout out in earnest thank you to our intrepid producer e cad we appreciate you au augmented out see

hey au this is julie and today we are joined by sam bay author of permission to speak how to change what power sounds like starting with you sam and i had an awesome conversation even though jimmy wasn't here to talk about all the ways that we can support each other in being better communicators here we go sam smart bay i am so excited for this conversation i've been looking forward to this for a very long time i always say that but you and had the opportunity to meet in a very kind of bizarre way and end up actually being quite a for two at this meeting you are also the author of permission to speak how to change what power sounds like starting with you which i have right here i'm a huge fan of this book but should we really quickly share the kind of sweet story met of course do you want me to go first yes yes yes okay so we were washington dc it was a dr day it was march a little you know little chill in the air i'm sleeping with my mom who i brought for her birthday trip to washington dc i'm sitting with my mom and let's just say we're not young so these are we're senior parents we are being very kind to take anywhere with us and we were having lunch and you just kinda snuck up behind me and and said hello we had something in common and i think the whole restaurant by the end was just like could you guys go like off and do something because we were talking so loud and so was really funny if you're were working on i mean truly i you had dropped a i think it was and so i literally just like came up to tan your scarf and then i noticed that yes your child goes to same college i went to and there was like since and insignia one thing led to another and then once you started talking about what you did my eyes went wide and i was like i want to like ba in everything that you're up to at least my mom was like this conversation is not about me so i really understand why we're and this is my birthday weekend my but then shout out to your mom totally that is my mom happy birthday the queen he warm a hat i might not no happened that's right that's very true that's very true it's something you noted but we we know we had a great conversation and it was so phenomenal to hear about your journey very briefly in that time together but certainly made me buy your book while i was sitting there and also make sure that we had an opportunity to meet up on this podcast so with that little bit of background i'd love to talk more about you and if you've listened to the podcast you know the first question we always ask our guests is to say that a mentor is somebody who believed in you before you believed in yourself so who might that person have been for you and what did they see i will say that the the grown ups who were the most helpful to me my whole life or my parents but as in a mentorship capacity where it was really somebody who didn't unlike one's parents didn't have any application right i just saw something in before i saw in myself there's this woman named jane she worked for like twenty years at con nas and i have this background in the art i have an mfa in acting and then i transitioned in new york and then in hollywood into dialect coaching so you know i like to say i help a lot of movie stars with their tongues it's true tell stars what to do with their tongues but a lot of that is past tense because of this massive you know transition into into the book topic which really expanded who i serve but when i was in the middle of the dialect coaching while building really out my dialect coaching life but always knowing there was something else that i'm really i have a lifelong interest in these larger questions of how we all communicate why we all use the words we do the sounds the tone right like what's really happening on like a subliminal level as well as on a conscious level to sort of be ourselves out loud and especially when power dynamics come into play i've always been interested in that and so of course i was doing on this my new level with literally like tongue movements but the bigger questions we're hanging out and this woman said we need to get you into con nas and she started to introduce me to folks at all kinds of different magazines under their umbrella when they were this was like ten years ago when they were beginning to create some some video content okay the spoiler alert yeah it went nowhere it went nowhere i mean it's okay but it's like you know this there is something about this aspect of mentorship that she was specifically we had meetings and meetings i flew to new york a few times to meet the people that she was telling me to meet with who were all there you know the doors were open because of her none of that was for nothing like of course it resulted in not an an engagement so i could say it resulted in nothing but i changed who i was because of how she saw me is it because she saw this opportunity to be able to change the way was it that like content was delivered or it was the way that people i think she really she want you know i'm just gonna be really i'm gonna flex she really liked how my brain worked she really liked i'm i'm a massively associate thinker and of course there are downsides to that for anybody who is like and then i worked a little bit over here then i did this so i get this i'm just chaos i'm just walking chaos but the good side is i am a pattern here and i noticed bits in other places that other people are not necessarily putting together you know my my what's it called clifton strengths number one strength is strategic thinking it really is like high level pattern noticing and i think she was really intrigued by what i could bring to all kinds of i mean you know i mean i remember she was trying to get me into pop back like popular mechanics is not a is i'm not its demographic but but they knew wired which was on the other side of things was like really you know so yeah she called me catholic with a lowercase c which i remember i had to look up okay what tell me exactly what that means i have no idea it basically means interested in everything but let me see i'm assuming we're doing delightful out of this yes yes including okay the official definition is including a wide variety of things all embracing which is one might say ironic given catholic with the case see but yeah so i i remember having to look that up and being like oh a diverse thinker ec idiosyncratic right like i just was i was in my late twenties having somebody reflect me back to me yeah and and really seeing in me the inter i won't stand on elaine rebel which is i think like central to my work these days so you're there we go you know and that validation right on that validation especially if it is somebody in kind of a corporate environment who's able to see in you like okay i see the benefit that you're gonna bring to this but you're not going to be here and that is wonderful and that is wonderful to have these variety of different ways of looking at it so so that kind of got you thinking and maybe it sounds like a bit about how your dialect coaching that you had been doing which i'd love to hear a little bit more about had maybe translated beyond just working yeah you know it right it now that you're teasing this out of me i'm realizing that i hadn't thought at the time of this word and i think no one really likes this word coming out of their own mouth but i think she made me realize for the first time on some level even though i didn't have the language that i was a thought leader that my thoughts could lead others or be of use and that really is i think that's an inflection moment for a lot of us oh my thoughts my thoughts have actual value they're not just these fleeting things that come through my mind i might actually i might actually capture a few of them and offer them to people as a service yeah and i can point to the future and and i want to spend more time about the future i do wanna talk briefly about the past because i like to talk a little bit about your dialect coaching i have always thought which celebrity would you want to leave your voice mail every single night i mean i'll tell you the one that did leave me a voice mail and that remains on my phone am i gonna share this i am have an old message from pierce bros this says sam so icelandic because we were gonna work on an icelandic accent and he's irish you know we think of him as british because of double seven sam so that is a great one nightly would get like a little perhaps mono not but but as a once in a lifetime i i accepted it i love that i love that and you really served as a coach we talk a lot about coaching and mentoring right and obviously you know what you're doing was very much coaching were there any celebrities that you feel like we're sort of mentors to you that you learned from in a way different than what you kind of would guess that you would have learned from them two come to mind one is angelica houston we collaborators i mean we collaborate in all projects that never saw the light of day so no one will ever see it and no one will ever know the accent that she and i did but it was half me coaching her on sounds and helping you know flesh out the character based on how that character's voice you know worked on her and half completely unrelated like how is this project going how is the collaboration going with her and the director how is her position in her career going what is it like to be a woman at this age like we just do the this has happened with a few other clients i worked for months and months and months with jennifer jason lee as well on the second season of hunters and most later dining room cable like i'm as a dialect coach you're on set you're standing right behind the director in video village watching at the monitors but the other part of it is you're often invited into these internet spaces where they live to just be with them and they pick i mean i often encourage you know what room feels the most juicy where is they're more light right like outside nature just things so that we don't feel academic about sounds yeah but lived in and then you know inevitably either voices bring stuff up or the safe space that i create because as you said i am a coach and voices brings up not just voices it doesn't just bring up the stuff that you might think i mean it's all of this as well it's all of this existential stuff of why do i sound the way i do who are the biggest influences on me what if people said about my voice and then people bringing that to these characters that they're playing but there's this other part of it also which is doing a new accent sub playing basketball for the first time sub anything new bring stuff up around courage and vulnerability and our relationships to that which of course changed throughout our life and then i get to just be there being like what is courage feeling like today how's is your breath and what what are others gonna think yeah and how are you gonna be okay with whatever they think like how are you gonna how are you gonna i don't wanna say steal yourself but you know sort of become resistant that's one's the right word resilient become resilient enough that what they think is not part of your story it does not matter it does not matter wow that is that is really really cool i do find i have a lot of attachment to people's voices and people's accents and not as much even in their appearance like just the way people speak i get my i just the first time i met my husband i was like oh i means it's from boston but like he has that just like g toss kind of voice and it was like oh i just i so i just the whole concept that you have taken from your dialect coaching to the book which i definitely wanted to spend some time talking about on permission to speak is really like thinking about and and and i think there's some people who just naturally have authoritative voices maybe they have deeper voices or you know so it's like what do we consider these authoritative which is probably just what i just said and one thing i was thinking a lot about throughout this book is that idea supporting others in finding their authentic voice and helping them achieve their goals because in mentoring we talk a lot about setting your vision setting your goals and work with a mentor to help you and i'm curious if sometimes you find that there's a bit of a j position between maybe what you're setting out and your goals and your vision for yourself and also finding your authentic voice so there's it's a bit of a deep question but i'd love to hear your thoughts on that yeah i have a few thoughts okay one of them is authentic like the word confidence i feel like is not a quality that we achieve by doing it we achieve it by doing something else and it's the byproduct mh so for example right like getting better at something and knowing we're better at it and then the feeling like an inner delight that we're better at something oh look we seem confident to other people suddenly not because we're like i'm gonna puff out my chest and try to seem confident similarly with authenticity right it doesn't work if we're constantly looking at ourselves being like am i seeming real but if we are centering our own delight if we are carrying out loud as i put it in the book right if discovering what it is that we really care a lot about and then doing the work it's actual work to bring that level of care into the room so people can see that we care and i'm saying this as literally as i am for those of you listening being like what does she mean because most of us have a lifelong habit of either hiding how much we care because it's inconvenient seen and too enthusiastic yeah and vulnerable or or very vulnerable because once i mean literally like you know in movies when the bad guys like child is stolen or the good guys child is stolen and that's how that starts to right like when someone knows what you care about they know how they can hurt you we learn this lesson over and over and over right so when we say i care about this we are being vulnerable and the gamble is we also will show people who we are and then they will fall in love with us and if we don't show them who they we are they will not they might like us they might find us boring they might find us easy but they will never follow love with us so there is that element of of some of us have this habit of you know hiding how much we care about something for completely understandable like risk management reasons and then some of us also have this competing habit of sort of over caring of acting like we care and we don't i call this customer service voice but it's also you know a thing that many women are socialize to do oh my gosh wow yes oh this is something i really care about which is also a form of hiding and risk management so to actually find the sweet spot in the middle where we're like i care about this and you're going to hear it in my voice you're gonna see it in my eyes and you're gonna know that like this is something that matters a lot to me that's actually a practice it's an undoing it's a deep you know programming practice and how how do you find people are finding that space or that balance is it the kind of thing that they kind of need to have reflected back to them is it the kind of thing that there's kind of more content and conversations about i think that's a that's a real nuance it is i think if we're talking about literally just prepping like a pitch yeah the answer is practice meets having some allies or friends or mentors to actually play it off you know even just the opening minute you know i'm here to talk to you about this and i really care about this because and and centering our own delight inside of it like knowing that how much we care about the thing is a good thing is like part of the rebellious delightful act that's gonna make somebody fall in love with you or if we wanna be more practical make the thing you care about contagious so that they purchase then we do a little bit of a feedback loop helps a coaching obviously is where this comes in as well but you know the reason my book is called permission to speak and then that the cover that's the word permission six times is in different colors which i love different thank it thank get in sunset colors is is real is real and it's that the feeling the internal feeling of permission which is a feeling of freedom and a feeling of self trust is power yeah so yes of course getting outside feedback from folks but if we're constantly you know it's like my actors they do they do a line of text and then they look to me to see if it was right and that's when i knew they weren't ready bless right we know that we know the thing of like did it do it it was like a good girl or was like yeah they do yeah i do it and you're like that's so i completely like look no shame shame is the opposite of permission i am not gonna shame anybody for that impulse it's so it's so innocent and sweet and you're not there yet yes yeah until you're like god that felt good to me to right and i know it i know i landed and that's sweet thought right yes i know i landed and then you can maybe to if you want term to the person for like where the sounds there because it felt good i'd love to know if those two things match but that's a different thing than did i do it and not listening to yourself at all yes yes i only say the big the revolution is not just the revolution the revolution is not just beautiful public speaking where you're like a real human and you make everybody listening more of a human the real the real revolution is doing that and feeling good on the inside at the same time yeah and knowing that it landed with you and that it landed inside also and that you and not i'm not just because we're like self indulge because that is also a strategy it's how it will land on other people right so as you are so this book again is amazing i think it really to me at first i thought i was like oh don't need permission to speak i talked to everybody and then of course i was like oh okay you know after page one i'm like oh i see this is about this isn't about you know waiting for somebody to like hand you the mic this is about really being able to use your power to to the points that you're making and as you are going around the you know country around the world talking about this i would love to hear how you are bringing this to different audiences because my follow question is gonna be about what kind of feedback you've gotten and what kind of sort of men you've gotten from the opportunity of being out they're talking about so first of like how are you talking about this to different organizations and then i'd love to hear some stories maybe about some people who it's really landed with i love that yeah i mean part of what's been funny fun and and crazy making is the range of people and you know people at different stages in life and people are different industries that have wanted me to come and speak and and of i say yes because of course like this is you know in a way what we're talking about is just like the sounds that come out of any of our mouth when we open our mouth so my audience is broad kidding it's everybody who's ever made a sound i mean my cats my cat could probably use this but will be perfect okay maybe human human only okay okay you that n down you just helped me with so as a result i've worked with groups as varied as the women of google internationally so i did one for north america and em amir right the europe and middle east and then a separate one later in that same day for asia obviously for time time zones but also it was separated by a there was a cultural distinction there yeah and what the value is or what the worth is of of using your voice in a different way which was i know it has asked me about on the air so i'm like how much should i share that was google and i worked with a number of other corporations and then some of that are a little bit more arts like i did a engagement with mac cosmetics where i was coaching the you know they have a international group of master stylist so makeup artists but their job because of the pandemic had been more and more to create their looks while talking through the products whatever online and so now suddenly they've become content creators and many of them are you know our age and older that was not their plan many of them are frankly it's a really woman and queer industry so there was also a huge amount of trolling of hate that they were dealing with so i was actually brought in to talk about that it wasn't just like here's how to create you know content on it's it was modern media training it's like there's media training and then there's everything new that's that we need to take into account including both the bad the trolling and the good the level of authenticity that's that's anticipated by your audience and how to match that how to need that yeah and then i worked with refugees on how to tell their stories and i worked with high school girls i went into my kid's third grade class that was one of my greatest greatest engagements i was like is there money in this because this is what i like they're like absolutely no but you have fame and fortune and your kid will either be a hero or yeah no hero i was here they were they were like she's a celebrity what you outside my i was like sure absolutely absolutely anyway so you know yeah it really is range it really is range and in the corporate space and in the nonprofit space and in the art space and in the kids space the conversation is this is the important part similar yes this work is so human the only real difference is that when people have to go back to work later that day there is a constant conversation about how you negotiate what feels in integrity and what feels necessary to keep your job there yes yes which ties back into your earlier question about that yeah whereas in high school and in college i've done some some keynote in academic spaces we get to not that not that they're not thinking about livelihood of course they are but we get to with a twinkle in our eye yeah step into a dream scape where what we're really talking about is what have we been handed down as the story of what an authoritative voice should sound like what authority should sound like as you said and we get to actually go a do i like that definition of authority does it work for me do i like those kinds of leaders it going well for the world yeah and b what's the alternative what if authority sounded like me what if authority just sounded gentle and a little more messy and a little more loving and sometimes i voice cracked and i just said true things with heart and decided that's the new sound of power yeah and when i'm with kids we can jump into that dream space and when i'm with grown ups we struggle between is it worth it to drop jump into that dream space if i'm gonna have to jump right out of it to go to my next meeting yes and i think that reality is real duh to just say that reality is real it's that yeah it's real it's a feeling it's a what you're what you're saying is it's the reason there's no words for it is this the feeling like god it's also heavy like i would yeah i'd love to just decide that my way of speaking is the new sound of power what have you done bias training with my boss because he's not gonna expect that yes right exactly is that i say bias is just you know for for those of you who are like oh that's a new you know angle on this you know voice bias is this phrase or accent bias more specifically in the linguistic world so behind academic doors it's it's completely you know studied and and determined but that's not brought into the mainstream so none of us think about the fact that we're per biases when we decide who should we take seriously and often biases on ourselves i don't take myself seriously because i say like too much because i laughed too much because i'm too perk because i am windy when i should be straightforward and all of these should you know where did they come from well somebody created the standard and it wasn't us yes yes well and that is so interesting about the voice bias accent bias we do a lot of training at au mentors on implicit bias and mentoring and so much of the initial of course it's like gender race sexual orientation well i'm from chicago i live in new york i don't know very many people from the south and i recently had the opportunity to have a colleague a close colleague who reported to me who was from west virginia and had a thick southern accent and it was the first time i worked with somebody closely to and it was so wonderful for me to have the opportunity to think like oh it's taken me a bit to be like oh this person has authority and expertise and all those things i'm just being honest just because i don't have it usually so grateful for that because really many of us have this stuff on the inside and then we have the next thought which is shame why am i yeah you know stereo someone and this is the thing about bias our brains do it yes this question is what's our next wiser thought yes yes totally and like oh let me actually hear what this person saying let me actually acknowledge it maybe even talk about it and say like you know what i've ever actually worked with somebody who is not from the the northeast you in california i'm like oh my gosh you y'all all are so like excited about everything but you know like i've not used to and it's a little different right and then it's like oh yeah and like let me open up myself to having a new experience and what do you perceive about me being somebody who's from the north of somebody who's from the east coast or somebody who is from new york you know what what are your perceptions about me and your stereotypes that you already have must be my conversation it's huge it's so beautiful and i'm really i'm not kidding that it's really lovely that you just shared that because i think all of us have them and then we're like oh why did i judge that person because they you don't sound like they're from the us and i needed somebody in the us because i wanted this product solved on the phone now and not in one minute this part of the origin of how the book came about and how my thought leadership finally grew into itself is that when i was coaching gal on wonder woman two i started coaching women who are running for office this was twenty eighteen and we're heading towards that midterm and i tell the story in the book and i'm not gonna go into detail but you know obviously adding in working with women running for office was a whole you know opening and that's the setup the real story is that when i got back to la after working with gal at summer in dc andrea cortez was coming through town and she hadn't won the general yet but she'd won the primary okay and i had enough new york friends that were talking about her that i was like let me go let me go maybe women speaking in public is my business mh i love this so i went i was i was driving through korea town august sweaty hot on my way to this church where she was gonna be you know just speaking on like a auditor and i called my mom who you meant and i told my mom what i was doing and my mom said oh thank god she needs you okay bless right obviously my mom is my biggest supporters yes and i that love mom is episodes of brought to you by moms but yes brought you about them and but right i was like mom i think i think she's very just fine without me and my mom doubled down and she said no i can't take her seriously with that voice oh wow and my mom is a feminist my mom kept her last name when she got married she had a full bright scholarship she was in the the hillary clinton area era of like four women in a class of four hundred and law school and she quote unquote couldn't take her seriously with that voice and that moment i realized and i had this like spark and i remember saying to her or she's teaching us what getting taken seriously might sound like yeah and i tell the story to point out that my mother is not the bad guy yes right yes sit she just so beautifully as you just did embodied what it is to notice what the cultural story is and then accidentally just keep it instead of stopping it and going hey is that working is that working for society at large yes but also is it working for me what makes you know for everybody listening who do you love to listen to podcasts but also you know when award season comes when political seasons come what are the moments that somebody gets in front of a camera gets on a mic even just you know asks a question at a town hall and it goes viral what is the physical impulse that we each feel to share we literally can't keep it in we can't like i just experienced that and i'm not gonna share it with my friend we must share it and if we start to notice what we actually feel a physical impulse to share a completely different story of a quote unquote authority emerges yeah we already know we love people who show up and love yeah i i had never thought of it that way i love that you're really challenging this very unspoken bias you know to your point it kind of came out of your mom but i mean how many people say that oh i can't take somebody seriously who sounds like that i can't completely you and that that it is very it feels almost like it's biological or something like that we have well you know or socialize yeah it's a combination i i i i researched in my book i mean some of it like you know low here's a fun fact just to spice it up if any of us get a massage or have a really great yoga class with a really good s at the end our voice pitch drops so i'm not here to be like higher voices are just fine women's voices happen to be higher let's just be as let's just be as high as possible but i am here to say it seems like when we're all at our calm and are most centered our voices are a little bit lower and vocal cords are similar to strained instruments in that the shorter ones make a higher pitch sound so even at our most comfortable most women are going to be higher pitched than men but if you google how to sound more authoritative which i have done i include this in some of my workshops it is a screenshot it's just five things that pop up instantly and one of them is speaking a low pitched voice yeah and you know and i know every woman who's has ever had any experience navigating the workforce has at some point thought to themselves i better really really connected this slower voice right so like i just said something that's complicated right like our voices drop when we're comfortable but like not enough to be a man's voice but maybe depending on our vocal cord lengths it suggests that that we can play with our tone we can play with our pitch and that perhaps the idea that everyone should be within this certain you know hertz range is it just a cultural story it's certainly not anatomical yeah oh my gosh and of course the more you like think about your voice the more you just wanna like super authoritative super authoritative or do you i mean i go around during the opposite i mean like i'm deliberately you know modeling partly because it just brings me delight yeah another way of showing up you know i mean i also i tell the story in the very beginning of my book and for anybody here who's had this experience i just wanna like you know high five you through the internet but vocal nod i was struck with vocal nod in my early twenties and it meant that i lost my voice for months and i was in a lot of pain but i was not sick so i couldn't figure out what the problem was until i have this scope a little tiny of camera my nose down the back of my throat had a photo of my vocal cords and many of us have had this you know not like fifty percent of the population but some percent enough so that when i went to a speech pathologist twenty years later just recently to find out more about who tends to come to her she was like young women who all have gotten some sort of cultural story that keeping your voice low pitched is the secret to success and then it hurts us anatomical to the point where we my case lost my voice entirely away that's nuts that is nuts i don't think anybody listening to that podcast probably knew that but that is really really interesting so that goes back to being in your authentic voice and having people around you who support you in that and can recognize where that value is that is really in your your authentic voice and that you know that's what's giving you the permission to speak i have two kind of last things i wanna talk about they are a little bit more pivoting from how you speak to what you say because i know that you are very much you know it reading the book it is very much about how you sound but it is very much also about what you say two things are coming up to me one is it is may thirty first and yesterday there was a man named donald j trump who was convicted how dare you bring his name to this lovely space in in new york city i only will because of you know what happened i do have to know that his arrangement is on july eleventh which happened to be both my birthday and jimmy birthday so we're hoping for a good present this year to both have big birthdays but in the meantime i'd love to talk a little bit about his communication pattern i was listening you i i do everything humanly possible not to listen to him and i had to yesterday to get through all the other stuff that was happening has anybody have you like just avoided him at all costs or any thoughts on how he i'm gonna be completely honest i have and the only other person who has asked me about him on air is deepak chop so you're a very good company wow wow as an nice said i you know here's what i here's what i think for better for worse he's a fabulous example of somebody who speaks authentically to themselves and what i said earlier self trust yeah centering their own delight right delight can come in a lot of forms and believe me i'm not an idiot like this is not we're not in delightful times so by centering your own delight or your own mischief i don't necessarily mean that there's happiness joy present but i do mean that you were deciding that what brings you a sense of calm or yay gets to be central to your decision making on how to show up yes and i think that he is fabulous example of somebody who does shows up exactly like he wants to yes and that means vocal and physically and whatever and just talking around and around well also i mean also yes listen if we wanted talking to notice woman years i was like what is he eve i mean just like you know i'm like there has to be some science in this is there science in this it's just like he just goes around around says the same thing like four different i mean it's it's just bizarre if that's like an the understatement in the year besides the reality i mean yes they're science in and yes i have not followed it but i will say this one of the other other sort of conventional wisdom points that people tend to make about good public speaking is that you'd be direct and thus u and us and fragmented thoughts and hedging terms like if you know what i mean are to be avoided at all cost and so people go to toast masters or people go to executive presence coaching through their work and they learn to police themselves and he is a fabulous example as are you and i on this call that that is not actually what works needless to say policing ourselves does not give us an internal sense of permission yeah deciding that what we are there to talk about thank god they get to hear us yes because what we have to talk about matters that's the kind of thought process that results in successful communication yes yes and that's that's why i brought him because i do i very rarely bring him up but that is i mean whatever he's you know there is an impact there is isn't yeah and and all he definitely say exactly what he wants to say have what he's saying what he literally yeah literally literally and does not feel like he's being placed even when he's literally being pleased so i know verdict what verdict that's a opportunity to talk it's just an opportunity to talk yes okay last question that i'm dying to talk to you about because you mentioned google ai the communication patterns of ai from i'm only thinking of it from sort of chat written text but obviously there's tons of ai that's happening now in speaking patterns and what have you what any any any thoughts on ai or is it something that's been coming up in your work i have one central thought yeah which is the thing about ai is it's both genius and terrifying right so the genius part great use it for writing job descriptions that you don't wanna write the terrifying part is that they will it they the the whatever the va morph the am morph it they will take over all creative work right that's the terror i mean there's multiple tariffs but for us creative folks and so i say showing up like a real person talking from the heart making it clear that what you're talking about actually matters to you and that it actually has emotional hits that go along with deciding that the emotional hits are not by which i mean like it doesn't just have to be tears i mean it could be like edgar enthusiasm joy delight laughter grief that the emotional hit that you get while you're talking about something that you're connected to is part of the unit of thought of of a meaning it's not beside the point it's not getting in the way of the point it's not distracting right that the full unit is the words and the how is what will in us against ai taking over and obviously ai is just an ama of all the thoughts that have previously been had and so we get to just honor as jane taught me to yes that our own real thoughts may be the first that have ever happened to them in the history of the world and if they're gonna make the planet better we should probably say them you know something i found i have one chapter on the words themselves it cracked me up but like my second to last chapter i was like oh and there's also words that come out of our mouth but in my research i found this brilliant thought which is if you put in a sentence into the internet with any complexity at all any complexity at all two ideas push together anyway two thoughts whatever a thought that you have it doesn't exist we are constantly coming up with novel yes ideas and novel ways of sharing them no we are doing it we human humans yes are doing it so you know i mean i don't have like a solution to ai but the solution in our own lives is to believe that how we show up is the strongest thing we can do to honor humanity i could not have said it better that is a beautiful beautiful thought to end on i know i was thinking of you as a thought leader and kind of connecting those ideas and thinking so much about your work in voice and in communication and in you know getting your point across i was really excited to talk to you about that because that's something i think that's on everybody's mind is how do yeah how do we continue to stay relevant as humans in this world ugh yes well and also you know part of what my aha was in that moment with the conversation with my mom you know when i said or she's teaching us what getting taken seriously might sound like there is this ab advocating of responsibility we sometimes accidentally find ourselves doing when we think culture is moving forward culture is doing this of course it is of course it isn't we're only us and yet each of us is also culture we are the messenger and we are the message and we have our own unique stories that others wanna year hear and that cannot be replicated m because it happened to us can be replicated badly by that ai and everyone will feel it and maybe ai will get better and we'll have to have this conversation again next year and we'll come up with these strategies but we look ourselves two years let's give ourselves years i think we need two years to see what's gonna happen well we usually okay so jimmy always has a rapid fire word association at the end of the episode but and he is not here i will try to do justice is k it's forwards words first thing that comes to mind when i say mentor you say i need one does anyone out there does anybody wanna mentor me i mean you know those of us on this weird path with no yes road map you don't have mentoring me okay great good talk call me call me next week we'll talk next okay men that's also me men no we're association men grateful i love when men reach out i literally i just met with a girl a few weeks ago and then she turned around i was like do you need help with tiktok and i was like this was not meant to be transactional but i receive this is how this is how it worked it's called the evolution that's our last principal sponsor i mean it's fit sponsors about fit sponsorships is about fit yeah why i like that we have never had them before and coach seeing their greatness and then just loving on that greatness with such inc questions and care that they see it that wasn't one word but i will totally take it yeah i don't know how to do rapid fire sorry i don't do one word it's perfect it's perfect it's perfect okay wait i'm like i'm like well would somebody even say for one word for coach obviously have to go back and listen to it all of your okay but okay you don't have to listen all of but you could pass forward right to the end but yes but you're welcome to too but honestly this was so much fun i knew we would have a great conversation i am so impressed with what you have put together and your incredible background and what a fun conversation we had today and i am so happy to know that you are out there supporting all kinds of individuals and really being able to find their voice and be able to share authentically which is what we need more of in this world so the book is permission to speak check it out on tomorrow's linkedin and her website that we will have in the show notes so much for coming out today julie again just here to say what a great conversation this was with sam tamara and how much i got out of the conversation just thinking about the different ways that we use our voice in different contacts and different conversations and i really appreciate the opportunity to spend this time with sam tamara i wish her the best link in the show notes and thanks for listening wow you've made it this far and we thank you hopefully you enjoyed our episode and discovered new ways to bring more authentic connection into your mentoring relationships tell him more jimmy be an au with us visit our website for the best interactive mentoring content at au mentors dot us share our podcast with someone you care about like and subscribe and yes really you following our show and writing a review it's a big deal your actions provide us with the resources to continue our undefeated une uncovered prize winning productions we welcome questions and suggestions via email high at dot us or on social with our handle at hq we are most active and available on linkedin and youtube shout out in earnest thank you to our intrepid producer e cad we appreciate you augmented out see you

hey there we're au mentors we build through mentoring i'm julie and i'm jimmy and today we are joined by eric n a recovering tech exec a coach and the author of you have a choice beyond hard work to meaningful impact eric speaks to us about how the best executives at google free up time in their day and he provides one of the best synonyms for men tea we have ever heard here we go eric near like we are so excited for this conversation with you today you are the author of you have a choice beyond hard work to meaningful impact and we are so excited to have this conversation with you today welcome to oc thanks julie thanks jimmy i'm really excited to be here yeah great well eric the best way we get to know our guests is to ask them about their first mentor because generally your first mentor is somebody who saw something in you before you saw it in yourself so we'd love to hear about who that is and what they saw oh that's a good question i mean first mentors hard to identify i could think of number of key mentors throughout my life i guess i mean first mentor actually would be maybe my first boss i was actually in grad school at the time i studied physics undergrad and went on to the phd program and was having a real problem and that i didn't love physics and that turns out to a real hard thing to get through your phd program if you don't love what you're doing and wanna do it all day long and all weekend long i remember having these conversations where it's like friday at lunch i'd be like out with we other grad students and be like hey what are you gonna do this weekend and they're like oh man i've been saving up these five papers i'm so excited to read them and really get a chance go deep on them and i'm like yeah i wanna go be playing volleyball outside because we're in california and that turned out not to be good for my education i mean there is physics associated david volleyball i assume yeah but there really yeah it's gonna not gonna help me with like quite a field theory class for sure somebody i knew through i went to mit so an mit person fellow student that was a few years ahead of me had was running a software consulting firm and he was like you should come work for me like what do you mean i'm gonna be a physicist he's like well that doesn't seem to go in so well and you know how to computers and i need people to know how to program computers why don't you come work for me mh and and i was like that seems like a possibility knowing i didn't really wanna to stay in the program for a while but i know what else i could do with my life because i i'd spent you know eight or ten years getting to the point where like this is the path i'm gonna follow i'm gonna go down this path and i'm like i don't know how to get off the path and he was like why don't you come do this and i was like when i didn't fha i took a leave absence and i which to work for him i'm like wait a second i get paid a lot more money i don't have to work as hard this is a pretty good deal i don't have to talk about physics i don't i've talk for the six anymore and and he was really bent could mentor in other ways and that he you know taught me about how to work in the world how to deal with customers how to think about structuring work and all sorts of other things that have turned out to be useful for me throughout my career is there a quote or something that you can remember from him that's still like rings true to you when you encounter like a situation repeatedly yeah one that i pass on to a lot of my clients is to always leave a buffer and so we were software consultants and he told me plan for four days of work a week i'm like there's five days of work what am i gonna do that last day he's like something will come up he was right something will always came up either new customer coming and wanting something an old customer would be like hey we need more here on the like one like maybe once a quarter the be week where i didn't have something come up then you have some time to invest in yourself in your own professional development or building some extra capacity in whatever form and it was like such a good advice like only plan for forty days a week because something always comes up to fill that last day a week and you know most of my most people silicon by like i'm a plan like my whole not only like five days week it's like i'm gonna plan eight am to six pm every day and then when something new comes up and something always does they're now they're working a hundred twenty a hundred forty percent of their time and they're exhausted and they're burning out so that's one thing i've close on to you throughout my career and actually it's funny you know i'm self employed now and the first two years i was self employed i was working five days a week and at some point i'm like wait a second what am about i doing i'm gonna plan four days a week and leave myself fridays to catch up and that hurts turned out to be much healthier for my my life you still get to have a buffer even if you're working for yourself exactly i've definitely never heard that before so it's kind of like he was maybe you a little bit of burnout prevention or he was mentoring you a little on burnout prevention even before you knew that that might be something that you would need oh yeah and he was he was also teaching me about that i was going to underestimate how much work things required so and one other story i remember from working with him was you know he was teaching me we went to a customer side and the customer was like okay we need these upgrades or these features added you know how how long is i gonna take that was about to answer and with jason my mentor or chased my boss at the time was like we're gonna go to lunch and come back with an estimate i was like okay we go to was like what were you going to say i was like four hours he's was like what about the time to test oh that would take virus what about the time to integrate oh yeah what about and like when we came back it was a twenty hour as job instead of the four hours i would have investigate it if if he'd asked when they were initially asked me that was a very profitable lunch usually talk money but it was just you know it was he had been working long enough and had enough experience that like things just take longer and he'd thought about all the different ways that i hadn't think about because you think about the thing right in front of you not the all day stuff around it and so that's part of why he was very thoughtful about like you're gonna need this buffer because i've seen it happen you're gonna need more time than you think you do and so yeah it's just one of those things like especially people that are like high performance like i can do that i'm gonna jump in i'm gonna do that and just think about like the thing right in front of them and they don't think about all these other things so that was a really good my team would have appreciated me having this this person as a mentor because i often guarantee things that are not gonna be good to they're look at like no did joe she didn't just say that did she hello yeah eric if i can go even farther back how were your initial interactions with this mentor at mit like how did you begin to form this relationship where this individual even felt comfortable enough to you to not give you life advice but tell you how to live your life and be like please leave sc cat alone and come work for me yeah i mean i didn't actually know him at mit so he was several years ahead of me but we were both in the same opportunity but one of my classmates and mit had gone to work for him so i knew him through one when somebody else i knew so but i think i i can't remember exactly how it happened but i'm like i out to lunch by my friend that i knew and i guess we went out i went up to lunch with him and his boss together and he heard me talking about what i was doing and some of the work i was doing and the funny thing is i had been programming in my physics lab in this obscure language called lab view which is only used for instrumentation and work and that's what this software consulting firm did so i was like actually a very good fit for what he needed because i had experience with a particular language he was selling basically and he because that was the work that he did he worked with a lot of scientists and engineers and so somebody with buy background was actually a very good fit so yeah so that's kind of how it happened so it wasn't like i knew him before he became my manager but it was that you know my my fred vouch for me and said hey you should we should hire air well it sounds like it really gave you a chance to maybe identify more of your broader skill set which then has because if you think about where you are today writing up this book and coaching people i mean a leadership coach obviously very people centric i've got a chance to read some of your writing on how you know of course with tech revolutions but the importance of deep relationships and showing up for each other you went from sort of this very tech background now being very human centric so how how did that evolve yeah i it's very interesting that yeah i started up in physics which just like the hardest of the hard sciences and now i mean like the fuzz of the fuzzy side the fuzz of the fuzzy and leadership and that's it took me i mean it took me twenty something years to make that transition but part of how that happened was my second job after working with jason was at a biotech startup which had this amazing technical team like some world class engineers some the best technical people i've ever worked with and we were delivering oh we said we would deliver and the company went bankrupt a year after raising forty million dollars in funding and i'm like tell us why i am missing something and turns there's this well if leadership we had a terrible ceo he made terrible business decisions and turns out it doesn't matter how good your engineering is if your leadership is bad and that really grind my gears because i'm like all this effort is wasted because people at the top are taking bad decisions and so that started that shifted my career i i call that my origin story is an executive coach because i'm like it doesn't matter how good of an engineer i am if the leadership is bad leadership is a multiplier that matters it's a thing that just multiplies the effort of else either up or to zero and i was like i want to understand that better so this person did not have any mentors oh he had mentors save he had this particular ceo had a particular investor that had installed him as ceo at like four consecutive companies turns out it didn't his competence did not matter that's and interesting the company after he went to after the one where he drove at bankrupt was a public company so it wasn't quite as club and he got kind of destroyed and ground up in that one because the investors are like the public took him out took them out basically so this guy is doing a terrible job and we're gonna dispose in because we can do that with a shareholder vote was there one leadership principle that or like key that you would have changed like if you go back in time and just like you know install something different to that ceo is there one thing now that you'd be like this might not make us go of business in a year but maybe it'll give us an straight year of runway i mean and and maybe a leadership thing is realize you stink and go but well i mean yeah so i don't i mean it's not a big thing i guess i would say is listen to your people and like you know the flip side of this was i was in my mid twenties and i was in know it all cocky young engineer so i would stand up at all hands meetings and call him an idiot and turned out he did not receive that well i was right why yeah exactly i was like i was right but he wasn't listening to me so like i learned for that also that like being rights is not enough learning how to influence people learning how to effectively persuade people means meeting them somewhere in the middle but it's like all the information was in the company like it was known if there was a way to get it into that leadership and team meeting and unfortunately i was not effective at doing that at the time and he was not effective at you know at listening to it and even though it's was delivered poorly and so that listening to your people you really see as in in this particular instance or having somebody you can really give him honest feedback that he was willing to listen to because it sounds like maybe he was getting the feedback but he wasn't really listening to it i you know i wasn't in the room so it's hard for me to know what he was or wasn't hearing but at least from work the from the cheap seats where i was at the time yes right there there was a disconnect between what we were seeing and what the decisions being made yeah so as you evolve your career from there was that a key thing that you looked for as you kind of continue your journey where was leadership than like okay this is the most important piece it became more important over time and but i i think the the thing i learned for was like okay i need to learn more about business i need to learn more about management need to more about leadership so a few years later i went back and got a master's degree in technology management which was kind of like an mba for tech people they're like we gonna take if you're like eight you're eight to ten years in your tech career and you wanna to understand business we will help you with that like that is what i need that exactly what i'm trying to do grades yeah yeah that's great yeah so that was that was a great turning another turning point me that was one of my other great mentors was there that one of the things i loved about that program in particular was they paired you up with an industry mentor somebody who had success somebody who'd had been an an exec a technology executive and so i was paired with the man named john williams who had been cto at kaplan test prep and of few other places and he's spent an hour in each month and kinda gave me some advice along the way and he's just a fantastic generous person that give me a lot of good advice some of which i didn't understand for years but i catching up with them recently what did to john say give us if you love the nuggets two things i i i still come back to is when you're dealing with executives you have to do your work but you don't have to show your work and this is really hard for people like if you're used if you're used to you know being a student you're like let me show all my works so i get partial credit like let me show you how much work i did to get to this at answer let me show you all the detail and all of the research and every everything i did to get to this thing and like because i was like i don't care i just need to see the answer don't waste my tie with all the background and i was like because i was doing a presentation he i did it for him and he was like yeah cut the first ninety percent just give be the last ten percent i'm like but i did all this work he's like yeah i know you have to do the work but i don't need to it you don't have to show it i was like well how will they know there's was like we'll know we'll know because we'll see how you show up well know when we ask the first question because we ask a question and you have a good answer well know you did the work and i was like oh that's different and this is something that's really hard for people to get when they're used to like let me show you all my research and let me fortify my my position by showing you all the references and and the you citations that's the word i'm looking for yes yes lose the citations just walk in and talk slightly loudly and you know and smile talk words pretend like you've been there yeah yeah did like well it's like the difference between a ted talk and a you know a scientific you know session right it's like the you know that's all you need to know is the wow and the takeaway but to your point once if people start asking questions are gonna know if you don't know it or if you don't know if you do know if you don't know it yeah exactly there is don't know if it's i probably a legendary story about there is a quantitative that she was giving lectures throughout europe and his chauffeur of course was coming to all the lectures and some point he was like i have been to all of your lectures can i just like give it tonight and short feels was like sure you know why not like so he gives us a lecture he knows that you know it goes through all the slides and then afterwards it's the q and a and some physicists to but asked a really hard question and he was like you know that question is still i'm gonna ask why she'll free to answer it and points it and yeah somebody there's a some place online to talks about that like this difference show for knowledge just like be able to pair it back and actually really understanding it and they'll able to ask answer the hard questions about it yeah especially in tech right i mean or especially anything obviously technical of any kind like once you're actually really getting into those details but let's fast forward a little bit i'd love to hear a little bit about kind of your journey your last particular experience that maybe was the one that seemed to catapult you into this new area that you're in how has your how did your transformation come about yeah so after i got that degree in technology management i went to work for google on the business side of things which was not a place i expected to be like i had traded physics i've been an engineer like being on the business side on the mba side was not where i had planned to be but one of the things one of my professors at this investors program said was if you want to understand how executives think you have to understand the money and i was like i don't understand the money so when i saw a revenue forecasting position at google i was like i bet if i forecast an analyze revenue i will understand the money and that turned out to be true wow and it turned out to be very critical to understanding executive how executives think because six months after i started at google i'm standing in front of larry and sergei eric schmidt and talking about revenue and they're what there asked me like what's gonna happen where what's gonna happen with revenue next month i'm like this is by the way this is like summer two thousand nine and the depths of a great recession so they're like tell us what's gonna happen with the world in the economy i'm like nobody knows what's gonna happen in like but i was the revenue so i was the one that i supposed they really cared what i thought and that was like oh wow that that professor is really right like this got me into these meetings that i should would never have imagine oh you're about to say that you shouldn't have been in yeah i was not to say that but it was i mean like there was nobody better at the time like i had as much experience and and about more than anybody else so that caught in front of the leaders at google in a very direct way very painful way at times i was at a few years later i burned because i was working too many hours trying to keep up with all the demands of my time what happened to the buffer eric what happened the buffer disappeared because i didn't know how to say no well you know it was like they they they said you're doing great we'd love to give you more work and me being that high performer wanting you need to exceed succeed the i like yeah i can take that yes i could take that i could do that but the work just kept adding on and on and on i didn't know how to let go of the other work while taking more work so it just accumulated until i kind of got crushed under the pressure and yeah so learning say no was a really really difficult thing for me because you know to this is kind of the genesis of my book you have a choice is at the time i didn't think i had choice but i have to earn that next promotion to earn that expert promotion i have to do whatever i manager tells me mh who and yeah that's a big deal because we we learned from oprah not directly that no is a complete sentence but yeah it's gonna be a lot harder to say no if you don't feel like you have another choice exactly and if you spent your whole life conditioned to do what the authority figure says which you've been conditioned do since being a young child in school in your first job where your manager tells me what to do it's like all the way through your life condition do what the authority figure says and so i did and went i ahead of manager that was just giving me ridiculous amounts of work that was like working past midnight every night and that still wasn't good enough it was like i didn't know i didn't see a way out and were you able to like this is one of those experiences when we talk a lot about mentoring it obviously and we talk a lot about having a tribe of mentors and various mentors and mentors that are within your organization mentors that are outside your organization within your organization were there mentors that you could talk to about this i imagine not totally uncommon situation that was happening and he how did that go yeah i mean i had one mentor actually i just had lunch them yesterday so it's he's still it was great to reach out to him but he he was remarkable within google because he was very effective very impactful trusted by everybody up to the ceo and cfo and he left work at six pm and at the time i was with secret sauce yeah exactly i was am to midnight i'm like burning out i'm like duck getting being effective and he's like he's effective and not working those hours so asked him i'm like san how do you do it like well eric i come to work and i work on the most important thing first and if i don't get to the next thing that's okay it wasn't as important and it sounded so simple except what i looked at what i i was doing i would come into at eight am and i'd spent two hours on emails answering everybody that put something in my inbox i go to meetings and people put in my calendar go to all the meetings on my calendar from ten to five come back to my desk there's more emails i'd spent another hour in emails it's six pm and i haven't started on the one thing i do that day the one thing only i could do and that's why i'm working till midnight and the thing he was good at was like yeah i'm just gonna do that thing at eight am get it done and then if i have time for emails or meetings i'll deal with them afterwards but just ignore all the emails and ignore all the meetings until get that thing done that meant he annoyed people people what is his attention they weren't getting it and that was the bit that i've didn't took me time to learn how to do like accepting the fact that people would be unhappy with me whereas he was so clear this is the impact i wanna have these are the stakeholders that matter to be that i'm willing to let other people be annoyed with me yeah it's like the boundaries is it's the personal it's the boundaries even with yourself right and setting like that expectation for yourself that you will not to be able to make everybody happy yes because that's the thing i i tell people this story the most important thing first like that sounds great but then how do i keep everybody happy i'm like no no no no no that's that's that's not part of the choice here like if you choose this you're not choosing that and then they're like oh i don't like that like well that's different i'm tell you this is the choice available to you you can decide what to do with it so i i love that are there some other things in like tips that you like to think through around how how to get better at saying no how to understand you have that choice like like what are the variety of decisions that can help empower you to you know get that freedom back yeah i think it's really important to understand what you're saying yes to mh because it's hard to say no like no i don't want do that if you say no i don't want to do that because i'm doing this instead this is more important to me that's a little easier both for your you mentally like but also for the other person to hear like it's not that i'm saying i'm saying no because your it's stupid it's like no that's a great idea and there's nothing over here that's even more important steve jobs has a quote to go something like people think focus me saying yes to the thing you've gotta to focus on but that's not what it means at all it means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are like yeah these are good ideas but i have a great idea over here that i'm gonna focus on and people think like i can focus without making hard decisions and it's like no that's that's not how it works it's like you have to make these hard calls like this is gonna hurt to say no to and that allows me to focus even more on the important things because you cannot do everything and you definitely cannot do everything all at the same time you really can't you can't do it all and boy people hate hearing that especially i'm i'm based in silicon valley we have all these over overseer you're like i'm gonna be great at work i'm gonna a great dad i'm be a great part gonna run triathlon for my free time and i'm gonna get it all that nba at nonprofit board it's like yeah okay that's that's nice that you wanna do with that all all that but if somebody's gonna pick one of those things and do only that one thing they're gonna be better at the you sorry that's just gonna be true they like hearing that what what one of my favorite statements especially to my two year old is it's good to want things but yeah i'm happy for you yeah not to do them all yeah i hear that you want that that's great my other favorite when i saw a t shirt was i am not pizza i cannot make everybody happy it's like that's pretty not pizza i can't make everybody happy i i guess the assumptions pizza makes everybody happy but i am not pizza i yeah so what are some of the ways because i think this is actually really relevant to mentoring how do you help people think through okay clarify you know how to say yes so i think to that last point it's like when you say yes understand what will you give up what are you gonna let go of to enable that yes if you think about it like you are spending all your time right now on a week to week basis so it's like i want to do ten more hours on this okay where's that ten hours is gonna come from what are you gonna do sleep sleep is not the answer and sleep is not the answer that i was gonna say that nope and so you know you talk about like how do you set this expectation how you set this vision have you said the thing like one of the extra exercise of lead people through is like i it's i call it the hundred hour exercise like a week has a hundred sixty eight hours but if you take out time for sleep and eats and like basic self care you have basically a hundred hours to spend to budget how do you wanna spend it you can spend a hundred hours and work for the howard a hundred hour family you spend time on friends you can spend time on yourself but you can't get more than a hundred hours so it's like okay i wanna do this great where is it coming from what buckets are coming out of and very relevant conversation yeah so i mean like we could do that right now into this podcast ourselves it's amazing one thing i've been ticket you know you'd i know one of the things you talk about with venturing his vision and i was working with the client recently i was like i wanna a five year vision for my life and he was thinking like i wanna know what company i would work for i what position it's gonna be and i'm like you know what we're gonna do instead i want you to think about what is a good day book like yeah i love that i shared that with jimmy from your linkedin i love that yeah what is a good day look like how would you wanna spend your day at work what are the things that make a good workday and he was like oh i like doing this i'm gonna do this this is entertaining this is in great what's your current workday look like say know you can just see him slope like great we know where we wanna go we know where we are now we said just kinda figure out how to close that gap it it and he's like that's not a five year vision i'm like it isn't you couldn't get there in five years she's like because any admitted i turned into digital challenge he likes that yeah makes search challenge like that you can't yes i can so go ahead jimmy i was gonna ask how many people do you ask are you happy with your current workday and they don't go they actually like yeah well i mean i work as a coach so they wouldn't be coming to me if they were happy good point i mean yeah you know like literally the first line of my book is how do you feel about your life if you love it this book is not for you you're doing great keep doing what you're doing if not let's talk go pick so pick up something else and yeah like what does your day actually look like right what is like what is your day in day out and i know some of the jimmy and i do a lot of mentoring of students and new grads and they're trying to decide what kind of a workplace they wanna be in what like what does your day look like are you sitting behind a desk all day or in an office all day are you in a clinic are you in the field are you you know what does that look like and that seems so basic but it's such an important thing to just start thinking about like what is going to work for you and how do you wanna feel at the end of the day yeah i think how you wanna feel is so important like really understanding what brings you energy what drains you yeah and i think it's really hard for somebody early in their career or a college student to understand this because they don't know yeah like when i was leaving grad school i i talking to another friend i was like i think maybe i should like leave grad school and just spend three months thinking about what i should do with my life and he's was like that's the dumbest idea ever heard of you're not gonna figure out what you do by thinking about it you have to do things like to figure out yeah i was like you gotta do things because if i was gonna work for you so go do things try things and that's how you're gonna learn and so like you know when i tell talk to you a little people in college or in their in their career really in the careers i'm like go try things like yeah oh but what if i do the wrong thing i'm like your career is gonna be forty something years you can afford debate take up one year missteps if it helps you be more effective later on so like explore try things like five ten years in your career you'll have a better idea of what helps you be great at work what helps you be your best self at work then you start optimizing for that but right now you don't know so try things just jump in well in that and that makes me think my biggest question for you is how do you help your silicon valley clients connect the treadmill of success and they're being bought into that treadmill of success to what might be actually making them really unhappy and how do you sort of unlock that the narrative we've been fed with like what might be making them really unhappy that's a good question i mean the first thing is for them to notice that they're unhappy because they're so focused on keeping other people happy on getting that next promotion on getting the next whatever it is next money next promotion next title they actually don't pay attention to how they feel and i'll be tired i'm like you seem tired seemed down today i'm like no i'm fine like u let's let's slow down a little bit and it's at had one of my one of my mentor coaches actually one said like there's only two reasons that people change inspiration about a better future or desperation because they're so miserable and you need both you need an inspiration of like what could my life look like and you need the flame of desperation like this sucks my current life sucks so i am ready to take the risk on changing and so how do i get people like i mean if they've come to me again there's they're ready for some sort of change and i just turn up that flame and i'm like boy that sounds miserable yeah that sounds really tough what could you do differently they're like oh i could never do that like could you try and experiment what would it look like did you like one little tiny baby step in that direction and like so that's what i had tried to do as a coach i really identify these concrete steps it could take right now and because my clients are all like technical people i'm like let's run an experiment no they can't say no to experiment like just try it if it doesn't work you wanna make your audience you gotta know your audience yeah you learned and if it does work great we'll do more of now like okay i could try that one thing so like i mean this is a silly example but you know i had one client was like i've got so much work on my play got so many meetings i have time to go like do the work i wanna do meaningful work the strategic work i'm like so go to less meetings like oh i have to be in the meetings i'm like oh why it's like well i need to tell them what to do okay what would happen if you weren't there it's like well i don't know if think they would get the right answer like can we test that it's like how do you test it like go to the meeting and shut up don't say anything he was like okay i guess i could try that and he tried it and the first result which is interesting in of itself was it that his team freaked out like what does it mean does this guy's ask me be like are you okay are you shit on yeah they're like what is happening is he additives at us and say i had a purpose it like gonna step back a little bit my coaches asked me to try this experiment a bit and he sat back and they got to the entry he wanted and didn't after interview and he was like oh they know what they're doing i just wasn't give them a space to do it and that freed up uphill all all this time as he realized he could give away more and more to do the strategic work he wanted to do it was such a small intervention but like just that even that moment where he realized like his team freaked out when he wasn't speaking was like oh that's an eye opener and did he go to less meetings he did yay i feel like do you have like do you have like a mentoring i don't maybe not mentoring is not the right word i feel like you should have like a pos of recovered like the people who have worked with you and who are like oh there is another way it's almost does it feel like it's sort of like a small cult of like people who have actually seen this difference and like make taking a different choice is there a way that they connect with each other after they're done working with you you know that's funny i only recently started doing that yeah so i have a bunch of vp vpn engine vp of engineering and cto and i realize i think they're all asked me similar questions i'm like why don't you guys talk to each other instead of me you can like this generic dang so i was like we're gonna so i just start like this monthly discussion group of like show up talk to your peers and figure stuff out and they love it they're like they feel like they're less alone like oh i'm not the only one worried about this they're learning from each other and it's it was really interesting for you to go like oh yeah there's such value i mean i think that's one of the biggest things of that it's like you're not alone you're not a special as you think you are like so many of my clients are like oh my god i'm i'm struggling with this i must be your only client everybody else is so high performing i'm like you're the fourth person this week to complain about this like you are not the special snowflake do you think you are it's so important right because it tickets you need role models i think too again if all your role models are like these super successful people that are on the cover whatever and they're just like you know it you don't see the success of people providing of get people having balance in their lives nobody's gonna put that on the cover of whatever nobody's gonna you know talk about that but then seeing people who feel that success i think it's really valuable well and that who have that success and still have doubts still have questions still like i don't know i don't think i know what i'm doing yeah or still unhappy they have everything they've worked for like i had this one of my clients was a v well he became a client you in the intro chat he was a it's a vp of product at like a fast start up like oh you know rocket rock he's on the rocket ship and you know it's like he's gotten everything he could ever have wanted it like he's you know worked his way up to this vp position it's on a fast rocket chip he's like on the trajectory i already dreams of and twenty minutes entire our chat he was like are you satisfied with your life i'm like yeah it's like whoa just that idea that somebody could be satisfied with their life was like so because he had that was just never something he optimized for optimized for get ahead get ahead get ahead and he was like oh but i'm not actually getting a head is not satisfying me it's stop making me happy so why am i doing this and i mean it's a really good question when we all have to learn to confront what was the question when you brought together you know some of your high performing clients to talk with each other and you step back and and listen a bit what was the number one question or like number one statement that came up from these folks the initial question i brought them together on was like what now because they'd spent their whole career climbing the ladder like you know the career ladder of like you do this and then you do this and you do this you get promoted you get promoted and then you get reach to the top and they're like what's the next step on the lab like from here it's free for you gotta choose for yourself mh like yeah you could go be a cto or you could go be a ceo or you'd be a founder you could do this you could do that and they're like oh i don't know how to do i don't know how to make that choice just tell me what to do like that's not my job that's not my job you gotta figure out from here the path forward and to do that means really get in touch with what would make me happy at work what would make me satisfied i mean one of them lament at some point and it's like i got into engineering because i love technology i'm a technologist mh and in this role is a vp i feel like i'm a politician and i'm like yeah that's your job research allocation prioritization deal with people problems that's what vp vps do he's like that's not what i want to do was like i'm not sure you wanna be a vp that dude and like that's okay that's great that is like that's okay that is ball but it was really hard for him to hear because he's like no the whole point is to work your way at the ladder and it's just like wait that ladder just you know that there's that say like this ladder leading gets the wrong wall like if i climbed the wrong ladder hadn't heard that before i love that yeah yeah your clearly did the ladder behind you are you're climbing climbing ladder but is that the right ladder is that the right ladder for you like it might be okay that right for somebody else and it may or may not actually be right for them they may be climbing it it may look like they're doing really great and like to your point they may not be yeah i think having these conversations it's interesting to having a little bit of a generational you know perspective as i mentioned having college age daughters and a lot of their friends kind of coming into the workplace and what we see with gen z also i think they're seeing maybe some of the facade behind the ladder and maybe because their parents or maybe it's because of you know the ladders that they feel like they're hustling on and then they're like hey where are we going in here with it so i think it's gonna be a really interesting generational shift for companies who've have been used to having people who are willing to work really hard and work eighty hours and you know put more things on their plate so that they can keep grinding and now people are like actually that's not what we're on this planet for that's not why we're here and i love it i love that people feel empowered to to make that choice and say yeah that's not why i'm here like you know i was what almost forty when i was like wait i'm burning out i can't i don't wanna do this anymore like i'm not gonna keep working these hours that's how long i took me to feel able to like realize i had that choice and i'm excited when younger this younger generation is was like yeah no what don't this is not the deal i wanna make let's talk different different options and there and i think the the older generation needs to adapt that like recognize yeah just the character promotions and experience and money is not enough anymore and it comes down to clarity it kinda that that vision like what matters to me you know like towards the end of my time at google i was as this chief of staff or the search ads team at google and i had the my my manager community is like there's just other opportunity to be like chief of staff for a bigger department with more people and like it'll put you on the fast track to be a promoted director i'm like yeah no they're like what do you mean no like i told you gave promotion i'm like yeah i have no interest in that job they're like why not i'm like because the leader i'm working with is amazing and i've worked with the badly leaders i don't wanna work with them i know the leaders you want me to work with i don't wanna work with them i'm dating this girl now and i'm thinking about starting family and so no i don't wanna take on more responsibility i don't want more of my plate and they're like and they were like this person who'd spent their whole life being driven by promotion was like i don't understand what to do with you how do i motivate you if i can't motivate you in promotion and but i had reached the clarity of my own life like yeah this is like going up the ladder was no longer my north star and unsurprisingly a year or two later when i left google to start my executive coaching business and really zero and i what matter to me which is a lifestyle business that fit my life not one that is about driving and google to be richer and richer really fine i'm i'm very comfortable in google's in continued profits i'm sure you are as well yeah they they they soon have done fine without beef for the last five years i mean you're the one who was projecting the revenue so i assume somebody else is doing that since you've been you've been gone but yeah somebody else is doing it yeah i eric we play a little game at the end towards the end of each of our chats and it's a rapid fire word association and i'm gonna add something to the end with you because i i have a more specific question but it's just four words whatever comes to mind so when i say the word mentor you say guide guide how about the word men seeker the sponsor advocate and coach i don't think i could do one word for coach yeah to tell us a little bit more about how you see a coach in your space versus a mentor and what would be like some of the most like clear differences or nuance differences that like tease them out because we often find that in a lot of organizations they will be used interchangeably yeah i mean the standard kind of distinction between them is a mentor is somebody that's on the path ahead of you and can tell you what to do here's the right thing to go here's the path to follow here's how to get to where you wanna go and a coach is less saying like i know the right way and more like let me help you find your own path let me ask you questions let me prompt to you let me reflect back what i see in you that allows you to find your own path so it's not like i know the right i always tell my clients like i don't know the answer like i'm not gonna tell you the right thing to do like no just tell me what to do i'm like no i'm gonna tell you give you some options you go that way go this way there's some trade offs what do you wanna do whereas i think mentors tend to you know people come to mentors typically the question like what should i do here i'm like here's what you should do here and there's a comfort in that and it's valuable and all the sometimes it's a coach i will put in inventory mode i'm like no this is really what you need to do here and i'm sure mentor is also are in coach mode too right because a good mentor also then ask you questions to help you you know think it through as well i guess to your point it kinda depends upon where where they are in your life exactly so i think there's i mean there's some fluidity there for sure and but i mean i think one thing that's really important especially in a mentoring and relationship is being very sensitive to where the people actually are and one thing you know i had to learn is like i got away with a lot of stuff is a white passing man that other people go get away with and i got opportunities based on my potential that other people would not get and so when i say do this it wouldn't work if i was a black woman so when i'm offering advice you i mean go into mentoring mode i have to be very conscious of like instead of saying go do this it'll work for you it's no this is what work for me in my particular situation here's some lessons for it that from it i think you could learn it might be able to apply but in a different way so like in my book i actually was very careful about that there's i have these privilege check sections throughout the book i'm like this is what worked for me i'm gonna know this is not gonna work for you if you are a woman of color or as you are from a less privileged class for whatever reason and here's are some ways i would adapt that advice or your situation so just a i mean this is more general point about mentoring it's like yeah what work for doesn't work for everybody especially if you look like me yeah great point i am really enjoyed how you kinda teased out all the way from men seeker to then going back to men towards being sensitive where somebody is and that's a seeker is is looking for somebody to be just sensitive to where they are like i think that is like a really beautiful way to think about those two roles that we augment talk about all the time yeah i mean because i think you know to my i think victor actually talks about this victor saw introduced us he was previously on the podcast because he's i like there's where you are and there's where you wanna go do you don't understand both of them to effectively make change and so like being sensitive of where you are is the venture job in this they're also help the seeker guide help the seeker fight create that vision as you guys talk about the vision of where you want to go and then then that's where you build the road roadmap from where you are to where you wanna go exactly exactly well honestly this was such a fascinating conversation we'd loved getting to know you in this time so thank you so much julie are you a seeker i am a seeker alright yeah but remember all those who who wander are not lost i mean that makes me feel better i different slightly different yes but but seriously there's something behind this term seeker as a way for men to envision themselves because if you don't have a point of view as a men you are gonna lose so much impact that you can have with from the relationship if you need to come with something you can't just come as a blob or a sponge and say help totally and i think eric had really great examples of how over the course of his career which sounds i mean i'm always kind of amazed by how these tech companies ron and how people are able to just generate as much how put as they do but he really asked questions like is this what i'm supposed to be doing how can i manage this how do i show up doing the right thing and not totally lose myself so i think he just in terms of his experience was able to seek and get answers that he's now able to share with others who maybe have the exact same kind of questions and sharing with us even i mean realizing in his career how much people helped him that now he is looking to help others it's a big deal and even some of the takeaway good they might seem like one off lines but they're so powerful clearly in eric's life and you know need to be repeated i think again here such as you know if if you wanna really understand how executives think you gotta understand the money and sometimes just keeping it that simple it it's hard to do but you know people like i wanna run an organization or you know i wanna be a founder great you need to understand the money and if you don't have a mentor telling you that you're gonna be in trouble as a founder also see annie car podcast if you if you wanna go back and and and hear more about shout be jack the money and and if you don't wanna be doing that you have a choice i love that that is the title of his book you have a choice mh if you do not want to work eighty hours a week and if you do not wanna be following the money if you do not wanna be part of a larger organization you don't have to do that there are other ways to put food on your table and put a roof over your head and make an impact you do not you do have a choice and i really appreciate that was one of the reasons i really excited to have him on the podcast was just the title of the book like you have a choice and i think he did a really nice job of sharing his experience and how he's found really meaningful work in a way that was beyond what he had been doing before and also the other people in silicon valley that he works with and helping them see that they have a choice too there is a trade off though if you wanna have a choice if you want that agency you need to be okay that you're gonna let some people down some people will be unhappy with you maybe not the ones that matter probably not the ones that matter but you cannot please everybody if you wanna have a choice and i think that's the same thing about being a seeker if you come with a point of view you may bother one out of a hundred mentors and that's okay totally totally and like the support on your journey and not all the journey are the same and i think that is part of the role of the secret to figure out what the right thing is for you so i really felt i felt this podcast was really meaningful to me maybe just at the moment i'm i'm at in my life and just thinking about you know seeking different ways doing things and doing different things and it was just i really really enjoyed eric it was a great conversation work on the most important thing first julie come on keep coming dan i wish au augmented out i'm gonna to wow you've made it this far and we thank you hopefully you enjoyed our episode and discovered new ways to bring more authentic connection into your mentoring relationships wanna tell him more jimmy be an au with us visit our website for the best interactive mentoring content at augment mentors dot us share our podcast with someone you care about like and subscribe and yes really you following our show and writing a review it's a big deal your actions provide us with the resources to continue our undefeated une uncovered prize winning productions we welcome questions and suggestions via email high at au dot us or on social with our handle at au hq we are most active and available on linkedin and youtube shout out in earnest thank you to our intrepid producer e cad we appreciate you au augmented out see you

hey there we're mentors we build through mentoring i'm julie and i'm jimmy and today we are joined by na gray director at the national mentoring program at the us dream academy and an inspirational leader in the youth mentoring movement na poses important call to actions about the role of government and advice for adult mentors let's jump in alright well we are so excited for this conversation today naive look gray is joining us a phenomenal mentoring expert in youth mentoring bringing us some perspective and some words of wisdom on how we can all be better mentors so we are thrilled to have you on today how are you doing i am doing well and glad to be here and hear a little bit of what i know great great well one of the ways that we get to know our guests when they come on is we know that mentors are generally somebody who believed in you before you believed in yourself and we'd love to hear who was one of your first mentors and what did they see you here oh man one of my first right so the first person that comes to mind and off when we think mentors if we think of all of those outside of our family my mom of course is the first person that comes to me talk about the first person that believed in me like i grew up feeling like i came from a family that was just my number one fan like mh they thought the world of me and they feel the to really recognize that i could do first i could do anything so my mom would be the the at the front of that line that is incredible and were there like phrases that she used or certain like ways that she talked to you or things that she said like have stuck with you today i mean i'm i'm thinking back to when i was younger there's some lessons she's taught me now that i'm an gonna adult and the mom also that are sticking with me but when i was younger i just remember if i didn't rise up to my potential the disappointment and when i say that that it not in a bad way but understanding that it came from a place of she knew i could you know do better and she believed there was better and more in me and i just know now as my mom speaks about me even in my childhood about my childhood she talks about how she feels she feels like i almost impressed her and so that's how she sort of handled me and as a mom i look at my son now and i am so impressed by him and i think i saw that as a child that like my mom is in impressed like she's my mom we're usually impressed by our parents which i was but my mom was just impressed by my intellect my curiosity and so there were things that she encouraged i was the kid that literally set in the car and said mommy why is the moon following us mommy why is the sky blue mommy why is the grass screen and i remember her spike she tells me now like you asked questions and sometimes i didn't feel like answering them and some questions i asked she didn't know it answers to but she always told me there's no stupid question you know always always ask questions so she encouraged that in me which did encourage my just sort of pursuit of knowledge and and learning but she she speaks now from a place of and i was really impressed with you as a kid and i felt that as a kid so would you say she's now like your mom like in your own mother your mom i don't think remember like use that word before but yes a hundred percent and i will say also that now as a mom i'm impressed with her there are things i can understand my mom was a single parent i have the the privilege of having a partner my husband you know is is there to support my mom was a single parent so when i look at she worked two jobs she sometimes two point five she you know was very engaged in making sure we were stayed up on our academics that i was an honorable student from kindergarten onward and she made home cook camille like there was all door and she wasn't picking a burger king and she would come home and she would make home cooking meals and i looked now and i'm like how did you do that because it's really hard to do all of that right now so yeah i i look back now and i take notes from how she raised my sister and i and sort of those nuggets really sort of mentor me now in this season i love it now yeah i especially love your a question of why is the moon following us that is that is so good and i mean i think it's still a really relevant question now and like so many ways like both literally are just like the metaphor of like at there's some light that continues to follow me around like how do i continue to make sure that happens i'm gonna take that as metaphor whether you're not end alright if bell i'll take that yeah i'm gonna run with that so i i'm kinda curious how how you bring your obvious curiosity yeah to your kinda current role and all the questions you've asked along the way like i'm i'm sure whether it was back at or in other kind of structured environments you encountered programs around whether mentoring or creating relationships did you find some ways for yourself where you started asking questions early on in those relationships to help you better understand the program and or like the person you were gonna have a relationship with so yeah in terms of my curiosity and sort of how it's landed me here mh yeah what's the college and studied communications and minor in african american studies and was like i'm gonna be the next oprah right i love talking and speaking engaging people so like all things media that's i'm on my way but before college i really liked the idea of education and teaching and working with young people but as a high school student i was like i'm be honest i was like kids are difficult like they they don't listen to substitute teachers like i was a kid so i'm seeing my peers and i'm like i i don't know if i wanna do that mh so i got into college and then i end up in an honors program honors college and they required service hours so i started volunteering with this after school program and in that journey really loved it enjoyed connecting with the young people and it already always done some work with you so my background as a person of faith it did a lot of work in youth ministry and as a youth administer at my so always worked with youth but got into this space outside of my church voluntary and when i was about to graduate that experience coincided with here we go my curiosity as a person of faith i'm in my senior year i've studied i'm asking god what do you want to do with my life now right like what's my next step felt really called to impact the world and so which is why i'm like oh i'm gonna be the next oprah because i'm just gonna use my words and impact the world but sort of this journey of connecting with young people and an after school program and what is the rest of my life life's gonna look like the answer appeared and it appeared and it the answer was i was being an call to strengthen communities that have been underrepresented and under resourced mh because that's this type of community a that i had come from myself and b that i was now serving through this after school program and so it was that's what your your work needs to look like did i have the nuts and bolts and details that i wanted to have at twenty something years old of exactly what the next pack was because i'm low key at perfection nope but i knew that whatever i do from here it's gonna be about strengthening in communities and impacting young people that are from under underrepresented communities and so to what you were saying about some of my mentors right so that made me think about when i was that young person and so i'll just call their names now at where clement me arrested in peace was a mentor he was a pastor that actually i didn't meet him through church i met him at my high school he worked for a community organization and he'd come into the high school and he'd lead some college and career prep programming and then we just built a relationship he connected with my family we ended up going to his church i ended up becoming a youth administrator church but just stepped in robert vermont another and so the irony here is i'm gonna tell you i'm a girl but on my mentors were men at that stage i come from a family full of women so i don't think that i was seeking those relationships necessarily with women in that way my mom was a single parent so they stepped in kind of like father figures mh edward cl robert vermont and jay harris and we called them brother jay and so brother jay ran this program called civic youth leadership and he grabbed a bunch of us high school students and he'd get us together on monday nights at a a a local community center and he was teaching us the twenty one laws of leadership and i promise you i can't remember all twenty one but i think the first one is the law of the lid right so you can only go as high as your lid level i think it's john maxwell you can only go as high as your lead level but i'm in high school and i'm learning what professionals are learning in leadership training but i i bring all of them full circle to this whole now what am i call to do because it was like i'm called to be what they were to me and they believed in me they taught me new things but they empowered me so they didn't just teach me new things they gave me space to and exercise those things so brother jay left it to me to plan an entire college tour so i planned a trip book the buses gave kids permission slips like and we all went down to atlanta and we toured clark atlanta moore house and spell and then even had burger king donate food that we ended up giving to the homeless but i was coordinating all of that as a high school student but that's because someone showed me walked me through and then supported me and my journey to get it done and so to now sit the seat that i'm in my my career started with that how do i show up in young people's lives this way to empower them in thus further impact their communities wow those are some incredible leadership lessons i but i have some questions what was that moment you said there was kind of a moment where you were like you just got the clarity that this was your purpose yeah and it was bringing it together because we talk a lot about you know kind of like those moments where you hear something inside of you and like when somebody somebody valid or like how did that do you do you know that moment i do okay so when i was in college i led bible will study group board campus called toward the spirit and we would go every two years there's this conference called the impact conference and it gathers together african american students about three to five thousand at that time from all of the country that are involved in campus ministry but it was like you also wanted to still be cool though i'm just gonna i out sometimes you talk about campus it's like you're on the corny kids and we were like no we're not the corn kids and so we go to the apartment packs you're traveling places yeah yeah yeah so we we go to this conference and they have a ton of speakers and someone spoke that night and i couldn't i can't tell you exactly what they spoke on that night but i remember at the end they they i had they invited everyone to come to the front and that's when i like more intentionally positioned my heart to really say like god what is like it was towards the end of my i was going into my second semester of my senior year like what is it that you're calling me to and when i say this overwhelming sense of i'm just gonna be transparent by my own calling heartbreak for the community that i come from in terms of the ways that it has been oppressed it hit me prior to going to that conference i had read this verse in the scriptures where ne is like a cup bearer to the king and he's you know in the palace serving the king but the people in jerusalem their wall had come down it had been destroyed and so their defenses were down and emi said look like this is cool this lofty place they were in but i wanna be able to go and support my people with rebuilding this wall and that spoke to me in my own life in terms of the work of being called to go and support the same communities that i've come from to strengthen them and so that had happened i'm at this conference and was reminded of that as i'm standing at the front and i'm weeping and i have this overwhelming sense of heartbreak for the oppression of communities and the one that i'm from and that was where the came i'm calling you maybe i was just like still small voice but i'm calling you to do the work that strengthens those communities yeah it it was that moment i'm on my needs at this conference with three thousand other college students oh trying to look cool yeah yeah but week look i gave up a cool bag weeping and crying and i like god i wanna be used by you i wanna impact the world but what is it that you want me to do and yeah that was the moment wow yeah there is i think there is so much to that intentional moment and of course obviously from a spiritual sense that moment but i know even as we're seeing sort of leaders claim their leadership even in the you know not necessarily just in the workplace but leadership retreats and kind of having that moment i can recall being on a leadership retreat where i was called to physically step into my leadership and to claim myself as a leader and i actually had never really seen myself as a leader until that moment that it was like in front of everybody and you have that moment where you're you know stepping into it so i think there is a lot of power in that it's transformation i'm sorry yeah yeah yeah yeah a space to reflect exactly in a space to really be intentional which i love and like you're saying it's kind of all these mentors that you had over time from your mom to these three the three wise men we'll call them who are able to really help you kinda see that but that that's really cool thank you for that story yeah that that is a powerful story and especially you bring in the j position of the high school brain wanting to be cool yet talking so eloquently about you know the you know feeling the heartbreak of your community feeling called do something about it you know that's a that's a lot to carry as you know a young person in high school college was under of college right it was in end of college yeah it was the end of my my senior year so colleges one of my leaders were sort of equipped me to see the potential that i could serve my community but it was the end of my senior year where it was like because it was like you now you launch from here no more school so figured this out what are you doing and that's when sort of i had that journey had such that i ended up meeting someone we bought in someone from a host from bt to present for an event canvas and we were taking him to the airport and i'd done some spoken word and it was about the community and impact it was really powerful and he's like we need to conduct like you know what is it that you wanna do after you graduate and i was like rebuild the wall and he's like what like and i then i did had to explain you know what i explained to you guys he's like rebuilt the wall what are you talking about but he was from so he didn't say at that point you were knocked and you know beat oprah yeah yeah yeah it was taken yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm so impressed by kinda your clarity of passion or calling or like you know direction and you've had the with that you've had in your title of profession you've had mentor organizer of some kind whether it's director you know boss shepherd however you wanna put it together you've had mentor in your title almost since like two thousand seven not to date you but you know you know we're we're we're talking about you know get closer to twenty years and there's been such a seismic change in how people interact with each other compared to you know mid odds to now and you're also bringing up oprah i you're like oh maybe the next oprah just like so casual on the side oprah is now starting to to talk quite a bit about youth and you know you just had that you know what the anxious generation book by jonathan height and oprah is working about like how to talk about technology and schools how have you seen technology play a role in mentoring and do you see it as like more or less beneficial than where we were in two thousand seven so great question can definitely speak to that so the last probably four years of my career have been around building a program model that is all about youth and adults engaging online so mentor relationship relationship moving into the online space and building from scratch transitioning and entire in person model to virtual and so it mentor has changed and i'll just say in the youth mentoring space we started very strict in one on one this been toward this kid one on one relationship and then we it started moving it into like well maybe you can do groups and that's considered inventory when you have a group of adults and a group of kids because relationship is still being built and establishing in that and then we know twenty twenty and everything got flipped on its head and ironically the organization that i work for we were already having a conversation about mentoring online before the world shutdown it's just the world shutdown out and then we had to do it quick and so i will say that it was met with apprehension again for a few reasons in general like two people on a screen doing even what we're doing now having a conversation that was weird like yeah i know it happened a lot now but we're not that far removed from that being weird i remember when someone mentioned to me about zoom and that was probably in like two thousand sixteen and it was kind of becoming a thing but we were still having meetings on the phone conference line so yeah i was talking who was talking the background that that's that it it was weird so when we looked to move young people to get online with the adults it was like what are they gonna do like exactly how is this gonna go because we've seen what it looks like to build a relationship with we're meeting face to face and so they were apprehension about what apprehension around whether or not authentic connection could be established in the in the online space for inventory of course again my lane is used so there were about just safety in general and so that that's the thing we we had to work through and then there were there were apprehension about again just what the engagement would look like like what are we going to do because typically when youth and adults are in person i mean i can pull out a board game or we can sit together with the book so what are we going to do so all of those things sort of said in my face to figure out as we began to build this platform then we also the organization that we worked with to create our platform they do a lot of adults to adult online inventory so then there was the whole thing of this is really built for adults how do we make it work for kids mh does it help or does it not right is it beneficial i can say the first benefit that i've seen is that it is hop the door of access right so we have some young people who may not have a local program that they can go to a boys and girls club or y or a us streaming academy where they walk in the doors and connect with a carrying adult and so now parents can log online and say you know i'm looking for a mentor for my child and from home they can connect so it's open the door to access and then in addition to access for the child for adults for who want to show up you know now i don't have to physically when i was on the ground in two thousand seven managing in person mentor relationships i was missing a key population and that was my lines of fibers they couldn't get off of work at five o'clock and show up to mentor in a program that ends by six so now you know employers are saying yeah we'll give you an hour to do this from your desk so access has increased it expanded you know who can be reached and i think it has required a new level of creativity and ingenuity well exactly what are we going to do when we're sitting across from each other and we don't have we're not in the same space so you know i've been on calls of my own but we do this with with our mental mentor relationships and even teen meetings where you do that scavenger hunt in your house and you look for something i when you all come on screen and you share it because it's something personal so i think it has caused us to be more creative definitely yeah well and i think that sort of intentional in the conversation right i know because when you're really screen to screen right you're like you're really eye to eye i mean you're like facing you're very much base to face better how far your computer screen is away from you but there is it is i love what you're saying because it's like you could sit here and say oh it's not as good it's not as whatever or you can adapt to the change and get creative and see the benefits of the opportunity and i think i love that i mean for adults right people travel all people you know just the logistics have them being able to show up for their family and be able to show up as a mentor as well but yeah it is it is it is different and it feels like what we're seeing across the board of course with mentoring now with other things there is a role for in person yeah and there are those intentional times where you do get together and you do get to see each other and maybe that's a celebration at the end of the the time together maybe that's the kickoff but all those in between times there is an opportunity for virtual as well do you feel like you're seeing that a little bit of a hybrid model so i i'm seeing how kids are responding to it so i have some kid rash just had one of my team members send me a brief write up so their programs based in orlando and this mentor is in florida but a little further outside of orlando and meets with his online but was in orlando for visit and surprise them so they got couldn't basketball together they couldn't do that on computer and so they really really really appreciated and value that opportunity to connect in person it was almost like with the relationship having been established online it made that in person moment i think so much more sweeter i had another student who her she's in philadelphia her mentors in michigan and they meet online every week and the mentor was coming into town for an event we were having and we were also interviewing mentors and so minty came in and mentors there and they got to participate in an interview about their mentor relationship and so i just think it it makes a little bit sweeter when you are able to connect in person but maybe when it's on the back end and of having established that connection online it's interesting that almost you're kind of like preload loading the relationship with the digital time but when you meet in person it then mag signifies that power but in a way then that kind is like well the digital time is less valuable because you need like you know three or four digital interactions to then have like a really powerful in person interaction whereas if you did you know maybe just two in person interactions it's one you know what you know what i'm trying to say like i what you're saying like the the yeah what it takes to build connection online just might take more effort more frequency versus yeah what it takes to thank you for pausing and making me happier feel bad for my brain brain it's something there's that way the math involved here i would say that that's the case but i also think it depends on the person because i think some people some people are awkward in person they're just uncomfortable and like yeah we don't i don't know yeah i to say but they're just the that first meeting can be really uncomfortable for them so that's why i say i i i agree initially that i think the in person there's a quicker means of building connection but then i do think it's it's it depends on the individual i think for most people probably but i think the individual it might take some of the edge of the fact that i'm at home i'm in my environment that's comfortable for me yeah i think some of that might take some of the edge of yeah like yeah you you don't know it's on my feet right now you know i might be willing through my yeah it's be anything yeah okay so now now i'm like really curious to go down a little more so you've already said that different people are gonna match up differently on there let's call it optimized digital versus in person but then there's another layer which is mentoring by definition requires more than a single individual then you gotta match up what the other person in the relationship or the group or however also does best but between like a digital and in person back and forth have have you started trying to like tease out like okay like our optimum route for you know however many different like you know types of interactions is two digital one in person ten digital one in person you know have have you start thinking through that not i think i'm at the first step of that so i'm actually not there just yet in terms of the format of the of the the meeting whether in person or digital but i am at the first step just had a call this week we located at how many connections are really gonna make an impact how many connections does it take to really be able to say that you know all of those things that i talked about from my mentors have now been established in in this relationship so we're starting to ask that question so again when we talk about the evolution of mentoring in the youth programming space typically one year relationship that's what we invite towards to sign up for your signing up for one year and typically they'll go into unless life happens they'll go into multi year i've had mentors that were with kiddo seven years and now they're still in touch they call me and give me updates on the kids but in terms of what we invite people to it you're invited to connect with a young person once a week one hour a week for a year but life is different now right and it moves a lot quicker and people don't commit to things like we we don't like that's why you can pay something monthly thirty nine ninety nine a month without a contract now because wherever we have contract you have to be in a phone contract for a year so that's weird now people don't really wanna commit and that sometimes if you're remove the commitment requirement people actually stick around longer and they look up and they're like oh it's been a year so we're starting to explore in my work you know how many touch points you know because you can say a year but over a year if this the kiddo missed session the mentor missed session yes they've might have been a year completed but one year for this student could have looked like ten sessions you know or one year for this student could could have looked like for forty eight right i have do a math now twelve four weeks twelve times forty eight sessions and so i think the question for us to answer more is not so much now about like how long as much as how many and then i think that's i said i think i'm at the first step once we explore how many then i think we can begin to say maybe that looks different for virtual maybe it does need to be you know fifteen twenty thirty for virtual versus this for person so you're talking to an engineer who has had a second cup of coffee so my brain is okay significant moment so i'm like okay well if we're talking about online right so twenty online ten person whatever but now we're talking do you want those twenty online over three weeks or do you want it over three years to maximize because like there is you know like if if julie talks to me every day she gets pretty bored me fast so we gotta spread out those like you know conversations for it to have optimize the impact so there's like a way to play with that on my cadence as well yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah which is fascinating you're that's like we've never gotten into that this type of conversation before this is where you're i think it's i think it's really cool too because at least what we're seeing on the adult mentoring side it's there is like what are we trying to accomplish right what are we to accomplish yeah and especially when we're talking about because our you know we we built mentoring but if we're really building capacity through mentoring it's really about helping somebody get to the next level potentially in their skill set or you know get from where they are so it's sort of more goal based versus time based mh and then is that twelve sessions or is that fifteen session to get somebody from here to there to your point you can stay on like you can you know keep rolling after that but how is it like during that time what are you really working to help help them with to get to that next level and of course on youth it's it's completely different depending upon what it is but i think it is a really interesting conversation right like what's the outcome and sometimes isn't necessarily the only way that can be measured yeah and we have we use a when i talk about getting kids and mentors online like one of the biggest thing things for me was what are they going to do because there's so much more it's limited now versus when they're in person and so one of the priorities that i set out to do or to fulfill was creating a curriculum so now my mentor show up and they actually have something pizza to guide their session of course when you're building relationship right you don't have to follow everything we think to a tee but you're also not out here just figuring it out because we do have outcomes we do have things that we're trying to drive towards to help our young people have a sense of purpose to really feel like they're empowered and all of the assets that they need to thrive and so our activities are built around we sort of work backwards what are we trying to build and help this young person build and there's forty key assets that the search institute has done research and said when young people had these assets they thrive and so now that we're trying to build that let's create activities and sessions that help foster and cultivate that and it's built around a framework which is phenomenal for youth mentoring i don't know that adult mentoring has figured this part out and so in the youth mentoring space we use search institutes developmental relationships framework and it has five key components right so it's express care so show up and show up first showing up says that you care and then in addition to to showing up you know be consistent so that's all expressing care when you're consistent when you show up be dependable express care and then it's provide support so you know don't just come in with high expectations but provide support model demonstrate and then it share power this is the one that i say sometimes it's the most difficult and youth to adult relationships because of those sort of suffer from adult and that is sometimes not showing up to share power right this young person has a voice and make them feel like their opinion matters so when decisions are being made explore what they're thinking about as well but share power and then challenge growth so when when i said you know seen the disappointment and my mom didn't come from a negative place that came from i knew she believed in me so she would push me you can do better that's not your best and so challenge girls show up in the relationship to challenge growth not just a challenge to prove but by challenging me you grow me and then the last one is expand possibilities so show up in the relationship in in a way that opens doors provides access to opportunity so in in the youth inventory space as as simple as if you know your minty is really interested in a photography and you have a friend that's a photographer like maybe let's make a connection and they get an opportunity to explore but now you've expanded their possibilities really awesome framework really simplifies things from my mentors when they show up so that they understand that these are the actions i can do that help support the cultivation of these assets i don't know how that looks in the adult space at all but i think it's something that they could totally borrow from oh yeah well mainly i mean honestly the question i was super excited to ask and i kept wanting to jump in before we got on the math tangent was what advice do you give what advice do you see for adult mentors like what would be like the three things you would you would say to adult mentors so just keep in mind even if they're mentoring obviously youth or mentoring other adults i think you gave us this framework which i which is incredible i've never heard this before this is really really helpful any other just general advice or any other kind of words of wisdom for people showing up in these relationships i i will preface this and say that i am in a space and season of i think beginning to seek out adult professional mentorship myself so discovering where to search for that i i i i'm learning for myself but in terms of advice of what i see in the mentoring space for youth that i think could be beneficial in the adult professional space one is i would say some mentors like mentoring is reciprocal so understand that it should be a reciprocal relationship and when i say that i mean that and as a mint for those that are mentoring show up with the expectation to also learn right i think that as you're pouring out it's you're gonna learn something about yourself whether it's how you communicate right you you tried to communicate a message the minty did not understand it or interpreted in that way it might not be their understanding it might be your communications style but if you're showing up in that relationship willing to learn you'll catch that so i just think this idea of reciprocity i think when adult show up to mentor particularly in peer to peer relationships the individual playing the mentor role often shows up as expected with the idea that i'm pouring out and i'm teaching and i'm giving and i think that's valuable but i also think making sure you show up just willing to learn mentors tell me all the time i work with young people they learned so much and they are so transformed they've been invited to come back a young person but they talk about the way that they've been impacted i mean i just think that in at adult peer to peer if we sit at the seat of i'm learning and this is reciprocal there's something here for me we won't miss those things and that's a lot of our work is how do we really communicate that value proposition and help people really understand because we both been transformed by that as well by men is really changing our perspective and that's great thank you no i i have a question that's been bop in my head back to technology for a moment here that you i i never thought of this question and you you kinda said this but i'd love for you to like tease out a little bit more which was you're like this tech was built for adults and we're adjusting it to kids mh and suddenly it kinda hit me where i was like you know like facebook was built for adults and now it's for kids instagram was built for adults and now it's for kids and all those effects that's occurring you know is there something that you've seen that has been built for children and is like solely really used for youth in a way that is powerful because it seems like as i was like going through some of these examples in my head i'm sure i missed up like like so much of the tech that is talked about that are quote well problematic was clearly built for adults and it's now being used for kids where it's like yeah like like you have a two year old to year old the device in the kitchen like a knife was built for adults kids don't use it so why are we giving this i'm i'm not gonna say instagram is a knife but why are we giving this tool that show for adults to use and you you you open my eyes to that thought as you were talking earlier i'm curious yeah like where where do you how how do you see this show up in in developing relationships with youth it seems like we're not setting up youth to succeed when we're giving them tools that are that will built for a adult set for them yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the only thing that comes to mind when you when you say those things is that we sort of sit in the middle of trying to prepare young people for that adulthood journey right and whatever whether it's an online tool or whether it's the night or whatever that's the interesting space to sit in because you still want to engage them as a young person but you do want to equip them for navigating the world that they will be entering into and so i i i think that's why we see some of that in terms of how i see it i i don't know exactly in terms of what platforms i could say our design just read outside of what is literally designed just for my two year old like there's this couple of kiddo o apps that are like but but i'm gonna give an example even youtube my son like he's gonna go to youtube he's gonna find his show but youtube is designed for really it was initially designed for those it wasn't something that was designed for for kids and so he watches his shows but then he was on there and i saw one of his shows pop up and it was the show but someone that put all of these really bad words over the screen and he's too he couldn't read them but i was like wait no way but what youtube did was they didn't design a version so that maybe some of what needs to happen right mh this is something that we have we're allowing young people to access and to engage with this but maybe we need to create a version that is just for you know for that population well i really like what you're saying too about the fact the youth will be living with technology i mean they are currently living with technology so i think to that point it's somewhat unavoidable but then how do you make sure the platforms from a mentoring standpoint really have what they need and and train them actually to be honest really good virtual meeting skills mh because they will probably have jobs where they will you know in the future will be on virtual meetings and we do you're not like you know do crazy things to turn you know like just preparing that another to show up for a virtual meeting yeah exactly you know keep your camera on and yeah know so i'm be honest that's in terms of what's changed from two thousand seven you know until now with mentoring individuals would come into our local site which is always housed in a a school typically and i'd interview them and they would you know complete the steps to become a mentor mostly in person when i say there's someone in michigan but my staff persons in philadelphia now that exchange is an online virtual exchange and so now there are a lot more things taken into consideration i mean it where did you choose to take this call you know are you in your bed right and your bed so those things that have to be considered but we in going into this virtual space and looking at relationships at quality of relationships quality of sessions and i created a a virtual mentoring scorecard so my all of our sessions are recorded and transcribed and then we have this long list that continues to grow trigger words and it includes some acronyms that i didn't even know existed like inappropriate things that could be said and so the no transcriptions are scanned for trigger words to see like does any of those words come up but i also have my staff still there's still is human element and i think that's the part of moving into the virtual based thinking that the computer can do everything and recognizing that for me there's still a human element right i actually still need my staff to sit across from someone whether it's in personal on a screen to really assess how have they chosen to show up in front of you the adult because if this is the choice they made it's showing up in front of you and then i am concerned i could be concerned if it wasn't the best choice on how they're gonna choose to show up in front of kids but we do what's called a virtual session sort of quality assurance check right for me and so i just sort of have my staff pick videos at random and they go through and it was everyone engaged where cameras on you know and because his kids was anything inappropriate it said i can't remember all of them off the top of my head but it sort of has a assess it's a safety piece but it also has me just assess the quality of the session because if i if if you do this at random and at your site for the last four weeks everybody has had their cameras off well then we need to really look at what's causing that what's contributing to that or maybe you know you're finding that you know kids are looking like their bored their this the activity is not engaging so i think it's really allowing me to look at the quality of the the connection moment too which would just be more subjective if they were in person it would be kind of you observing them or seeing how things are going versus having obviously a lot more data mh and sure ai will make all this much easier ai design for you or ai design for no i i don't mean to play but i do wanna play a game at the end which is a rapid fire word association that we do with all of our guests it's just four words in total so whatever ever comes to mind to say it there's no right answer but the first word i'd like to ask you is if i say mentor you would say friend friend okay if i say men i because it was friend again that was the next word and i didn't know i needed a different word no okay i i love it that's wonderful how about sponsor dollars and coach guide awesome and then a question we have and we asked this often as like like what's a symbol or a token or a metaphor that can help kind of like unlock a more deep and enriched conversation the symbol we often use is like book club where you know people might have book club and people come together to talk about the book but no one actually talks about the book most people don't read it it's just a way for people to get together and share more vulnerable and the book is that unlocked is there anything that you see with youth whether you know you've already mentioned play basketball which i've always found is very successful to unlock conversations with youth but is there like an actual like token or even something to say that helps like kind of create a more comfort with an intuit intimate conversation person that comes to mind what do you like i'm connecting with what a young person likes and giving them room i think this works for anybody honestly when you ask somebody what they like i think they light up the any guards they had they kind of let down a little bit they get to talk about the thing that brings them joy but i have found that you know when mentors show up wanting to again learn right that that it's a learning opportunity learn what a young person likes that that sort of opens the door do you ask like specific like what kind of music do you like what kind of food do you like or just what do you like so when i get into like our curriculum and things like that it goes into some of those very specifics right so music movies food what do you like to do for fun a long time ago before we were ever online you used to have towards create a me bag and it'd be a and and the kiddo would to and it'd be a brown paper bag and they would put all the things that sort of excite them and give them joy paper snack where there's a picture of their family and that would be their introduction they're sharing their their bag well i already see i mean i usually to do an hour at the end of the episode exactly what we're gonna be talking about at the end of the episode i love that i never thought of that was i love that question i'd love that actually just that question like oh you i'd love to learn more about it what do you like this made whatever yeah so simple but that that was a wonderfully simple and powerful so therefore sophisticated answer yeah that was that was awesome thank you no problem that was definitely the best answer we've ever had to that question okay usually most everybody for real and maybe because i am in that youth space i just think things are kids don't kids aren't it's complicated as you know adults can be yes i love bad honestly this was a phenomenal conversation thank you so much for coming on julie wow na question about what is the role of government has been bouncing around my head for some time now and i i can't shake it i think it's such a crucial question in this time and how she so simply posed an answer of what else is government for other than taking care of our youth it seems so simple but it's obviously not and na has found a way to make it concise in what what the challenges is but how can mentoring play play a better role in really helping government help help our next generation honestly it's so true jimmy me and the more i think about mentoring as this i don't know with like a tool or a way to be able to create these connections there are so many massive problems between government institutions education you know an figure out how to solve all these problems is very challenging but mentoring is this very simple tool that you can just start with it doesn't it's not gonna solve everything i don't think either us are here to say that you know mentoring is gonna solve all of these but just beginning on these one on one relationships and really focusing on the impact of that is huge and we know having been part of this this area for a while that youth mentoring has some of these really really exceptional humans working to create these connections but they can't do it alone and to your point like what is the role of government and how government help with this and it it's so hard for people to get into powerful positions in government they're making a lot of personal sacrifices for their personal ambition and so they they lose this ability to understand children and youth probably even their own children they're sacrificed on relationships let alone the the youth that are most vulnerable and na says it so clearly where she's like when you get into these positions of power and you usually are coming from a lot of privilege and the the kids that need the most help do not have a lot of privilege so how do we bridge that gap and i don't have that answer but a mentoring relationship is a way it might not be the way but it is the way and it's a big deal for mentors to think about not just how they are helping one individual but how they can scale that effect by having a relationship start get with just start to start just start to start with one thing and to start with one thing and see and you are making an impact because i know especially in this time there's a lot of feeling of overwhelm and that it's too much to be able to tackle but just starting with that mentoring relationship is a great way to do it i also loved the stories about you know college experiences and leadership positions giving the opportunity for young leaders to really shine and see that in themselves i think was really impactful and that really brings you into adult mentoring relationships how do you help young leaders whether those are new people in the workplace whether those are you know new interns in your organization like how do you allow them the opportunity to become leaders and be able to see that in themselves so i loved how we were able to kind of bridge from talking about youth mentoring into a lot of the you know kind of adult mentoring relationships that are part of our community na passion comes through so clearly when when i love when she was like oh yeah i'm in this honest program i'm getting things done i'm just gonna go and be the next oprah is like yeah good good go get it na is it's fantastic and now in my head one of my favorite quotes i tell tell myself all the time is from oprah no is a complete sentence and now i have na quote which is you know what is the role of government if not the help our youth so for me nay you you have the next over today it was an awesome conversation and i was really grateful to get to be a part of it yeah thank you nay this is a great hog out au adventures out wow you've made it this far and we thank you hopefully you enjoyed our episode and discovered new ways to bring more authentic connection into your mentoring relationships wanna tell him more jimmy be an au with us visit our website for the best interactive mentoring content at mentors dot us share our podcast with someone you care about like and subscribe and yes really you following our show and writing a review it's a big deal your actions provide us with the resources to continue our undefeated une uncovered prize winning productions we welcome questions and suggestions via email high at au augmented dot us or on social with our handle at au hq we are most active and available on linkedin and youtube shout out in earnest thank you to our intrepid producer e cad we appreciate you au augmented out see

hey there we're au mentors and we build through mentoring i'm julie and i'm jimmy today we are joined by ro regina ras the president and ceo of women unlimited an organization that develops leaders who deliver results if you believe that organizations are run by people therefore people must be an organization's most precious asset and hr is what takes care of those precious assets so why is hr not more important and how can hr help drive strength within an organization through mentoring we are all gonna be in a mode of learning with doctor ras here we go ro regina ra we are so excited to have you on adventures today how are you doing i am wonderful it's friday and i'm talking to the two of you so what can be better what could be a better way to start the day we feel exactly it may a couple coffee do you have a couple of vaping i've already had that so i'm be good us too or at least for me definitely multiple cups okay wonderful we are excited to get to know you just briefly you run an amazing organization called women unlimited you are the president and the ceo we cannot wait to hear more but our favorite way to get to know our guests is that we know mentors are often people who saw something in you before you saw it in yourself so we would love to hear a bit about one of your first mentors and what they saw in you oh maybe like a lot of people i think my first mentors were family members right parents to i parents who instilled in me kind of a belief that i really could do anything period that i can see for myself and and taught me how to view situations not as barriers but to look at every situation as well how could i how could i accomplish what i need to accomplish they help me understand that even those individuals that were in my path that i was having difficulty with gave me something that i could learn from right i remember as a child coming home and complaining about a teacher to my mother and she just stopped and said well i guess you're gonna learn an awful lot from that person mh and and at first i was really annoyed with that like i wanted her to take my side and i wanted to be right but what i realized is that my parents gave me a gift to understand not to just close down situations that were difficult for me but to lean into them to learn from them so i knew how to manage that relationship more effectively how can i be with the person that i found difficult or uncomfortable and gain something from it not only for me but also for the other person and so i think that set me on a path in my career of leaning into the uncomfortable leaning into the uncomfortable situations the uncomfortable relationships so that i could learn from it and gain more flexibility in how i deal with people that were different than me why i love that i love that because it is really all about the upper opportunity right and i know you probably work with a lot of younger professionals as well now and there is an interest in maybe more validating people's feelings first before you dive into the opportunity speaking to somebody who has to college age daughters and jimmy heard me yesterday giving one of them advice but you know they very much want their feelings validated first and then diving into the potential opportunity have you seen that change over time i think it's a subtle change right it's not as over but i i do think it's because of the experiences that the younger individuals have just in preparing for life right the competition to get into college is diff is much more significant than it was jeez when i went to school and so their road is different than hours and when i hear people talk about the younger generation and how they're responding and preparing for their careers it there's a lot of judgment around it because they're not like me they're not like us right if they were only more like us well they're not their experience and their road is very different and so we need to understand where they are and meet them there in order for them to be for us to be effective with them we can't lace our conversation with judgment it just creates more barriers i love that line lace our conversation with judgment oh that's that sounds like somebody who studied criminal justice at some point yeah right it prepared me so well for my career and human resources i mean i and you i joke serious now i'm curious i'm yeah serious when i was in working in organizations i worked in this one plant and it was like you know it was very it was a chemical business so there was a lot of like you know rough guys working in the plant and i was this young kid the head of hr and they really didn't think that i you know could do much and so i had to find a way in and i would say to them you know my undergraduate degree in in criminal justice this you make you wonder why they hired me and then i would just walk away so you know it it allowed me to kind of break the ice with a lot of people that is so funny how this is a question i wanted to ask you but how from your time at school studying criminal justice where you got your undergrad degree to when you achieved your phd what was the differences in how mentoring was talked about in the higher education institution oh well during my my undergrad i don't think there was any conversation around mentoring it was not part of you know the the conversation at school or even in i'm gonna think of my early roles that i had inside organizations mh it just was not something that was prevalent so i'm clearly dating myself it wasn't until i started working in a bit of a larger organization and was focused more on creating pathways for development for people that we started informally are formally creating some of those mentoring relationships but you know i think that i wanna pull back from just putting it in categories where right of mentoring and we hear about sponsorship and all this mh it's really about how do you cultivate relationships that help you broaden your understanding of the organizations that you're part of right yeah you know i was i was hr i was a staff function and in organizations that were highly technical the staff function often is not as valued or seen as critical a part of the business strategy i happen to be intrigued by how businesses operate what is it about this business that allows it to be successful how do we align and prepare the team the human capital to be ready not only for the needs today but more importantly for where the company is going tomorrow and so i i think my mind is always in that business mindset and i i created a web of relationships that helped me understand the technical aspects of our business help me understand the financial aspects of the business so i never felt like i needed to gather that insight and learn it myself i just needed to be connected to the people help me understand the relevant aspects of it so then i can tie to my expertise around human capital development and allow me to be more effective business partner to the organization a that whole picture that you've just painted is amazing because it feels like it's really the engine right you are like you are you are tending to the engine that is going to drive everything forward and without the knowledge of all the other pieces and parts and being able to really see how your engine drives everything you know where are you going i feel like you might have had a mentor within this organization who helped connect you with these other groups or was that all really self driven speaking of the our technologies i'm sorry i think i'm i'm just a a naturally curious person and i don't feel like i need to be the sole per of all the knowledge like i know what i'm interested in and i know what what my my strengths are or the strengths that i wanna play with and you know i'm i'm not a finance person but i can find the best finance people i'm not an engineer but i can talk to the engineers and understand the that aspect of it and i feel like as an hr leader and i think one of the key roles of people in the hr field is to tying those connections together right to make sure that you're not you know working in a silo in an organization but you're bridging all of it together to make sure that we're working in concert with one another we're cooperating to achieve the organization's goals and and that's a lot of the coaching and financing that i think people in talent hr do and mentoring allows you to create those connections right because if i can under in more the operational side of the business they can understand more kind of the human centric part of the business and so we can start building those bridges and create more common ties amongst the team you you've kinda already talked about hr you've just mentioned that other term talent and like development with an organization human capital development human capital development yeah how have you seen these terms change we talk a lot about how language shapes culture you know i that's why i kinda was bringing up earlier how mentoring might have changed and how was discussed in higher ed but like like i i'm asking this question early on in our conversation i often ask it later but you know what do you think the term is gonna be for human resources l and d whatever you wanna call it in twenty fifty yeah i i see the evolution to now being people like we're chief people officers so they're really streamlining it even more used to be personnel i i'll really date myself yeah and it became human you don't for that okay and now i think it's more you know their chief people officers it's interesting i think you raised such a great point that i do think is an evolution to it i see that we're moving towards more a focus on inclusion so that we can make certain that and i actually like the word and i like the term because in order for organizations to reap the the benefit of this growing diverse workforce we need to be able to have inclusive leaders and create an inclusive culture and that sounds wow that's easy yeah let's just bring everybody that's different and we'll bring them all together and we'll just do well yeah that sounds take a lot of pictures for the website yeah but is it easy to be with people who and i'm not talking about just the surface diversity of gender and race and etcetera but is it easy to be with people who think differently than you who process information differently maybe at a different speed than we do so it's it's how do you help the organization and by that the people within it to understand how do you gather and and leverage the power that diversity presents to us right because that is the essence of how we really do create powerful organizations right we can talk about the culture of inclusion that it's important but the real work is in making it happen right making it happen every day in our organizations and how does it and and and fostering curiosity is what keeps coming to mind as you're speaking how do you in these organizations foster curiosity because we know as huge mentoring champions and we know you feel the same you learn so much from your men and when you're curious about them and why they're different and how they're different what kind of a perspective they bring you're able to really expand your mindset as well and of course that is what again drives the organization forward and be really curious to hear from you you know around inclusion are you seeing inclusion in mentoring getting more and more kind of connected in in the concept and organizations maybe seeing mentoring as a way to drive inclusion i'd be curious how you're seeing this to come together i think that's a great question what we see in the work that we do because mentoring is such as you know a core component of each of the development programs that we offer that are the organizations that we partner with are not only identifying women to participate in our programs but they're also using a very strategic viewpoint in selecting mentors who then mentor women not from their company right so what i think is so fascinating is that we'll have senior men and women and i'm gonna talk about the men in particular who will participate as mentors and for them you talk about them learning you know the difference between how men and women experience organizations is very subtle right but in that subtly subtle difference can create barriers for women that men don't see it's not because they don't want to it's just you don't you don't see them because you don't experience them when the men are mentoring women in our programs they hear the challenges they they hear the frustrations they gain insight into wow i didn't realize that that was an issue i didn't realize and several of them have said to me afterwards when i will check in and say you know find out about their ex experience i did not realize that these women are having these kind of challenges and i'm i'm certain they're happening in my organization and even if people are trying to tell me about it i don't think i'm hearing it mh so it it it broaden is again their aperture what they're seeing in their organization so at to your point i do think it helps building that inclusion inclusive culture because inclusion requires awareness right i need to be aware of how different individuals are experiencing the organization i can make sure i'm creating an environment we're all can feel valued we're all can contribute i'm curious what is the unlock of the mentoring relationship that allows as you're talking about the men who are being the mentors to actually hear to receive the information on the specific challenge for women when when it's not a mentor relationship they may hear very similar information but not you know have that unlocked to realize that oh this is something happening to many people in my organization not not to men not to me yeah it's a great question i think there's a couple of things what happens in in our the development experience that both the women and the men the mentors are participating in is that it's a neutral environment right it's not housed in the organization right so that that frees up the constraints of the organization the issues of the organization are not there we then what's what's interesting in the way that we and and i know that you have this philosophy as well we really put a lot of work and attention on helping the women identify what is their focus for development why is this no yeah know because if you don't if you don't have an idea of what you want to discuss with your mentor you will have a very interesting conversation but it will have no impact on your development so we spend a lot of time with three sixties and and assessments and instruments and really coaching them to get that finer point of view right because the women don't need to be fixed they're not broken they just need to have an idea of how they wanna own their development right how do they wanna advocate for themselves and with that insight they're able to then enter into that conversation more directly and i think because then the mentor is coming in just in a listening mode right we know in the work that we do and in the research we've done the one thing mentors can do the one skill that they need is to listen and be curious right those two the it's a skill of not only just listening to what's being said but listening to what's behind like are they sounding apprehensive are they sounding uncertain is there something behind or maybe they're just uncertain like a a lot of women are told you need to be more strategic well what does that mean what does it mean if you're more strategic so just asking more questions and i think that when you're curious you're in a mode of learning right as the mentor i wanna understand i wanna what are you experiencing what you know and and we guide them into into a a framework of of that curious learning that helps them as a mentor help them t find solutions right find a path forward i i love this i'm i'm gonna make a a bad joke but then ask a good question which is i think the way to be more strategic is to just say the word strategic more often it works hundred percent of the time done so you you're kinda getting into a little bit of the nuts and bolts of what is this mentoring relationship alright it's something julian and i run into all the time people are like yeah mentoring and you know you say mentoring they say mentoring it all means something a little bit different i like your listen curiously part is there a true unified theme that you have seen that with different organizations different countries different groups of people say oh yeah i'm a is there one like very clear like unified theme across all that because because there there is some lacking of definitions of mentoring and we use these terms you know like you you said earlier on mentor versus sponsor and julie and i asked people what does sponsor mean to you and like half the time to say mastercard you know you know it's just so so i you know what are some unified themes where we we we have a foundation based upon the english language of mentor yeah oh you know you raised such a great point to me because i remember when i started my research because throughout my career i heard you know women need mentors if they have a mentor it will make a difference and so i thought there was this body of research that talked about in deaths the impact tap on a women's career and so when i started doing my research i started looking for that body of knowledge and i was so disappointed in what i found because the research basis asked women did you have a meant mentor they said yes check it made a difference and i was like and and you just like scratching the surface i don't understand this so what i approached my my research i wanted to look at women who are at that mid career level because we know for many women that's that tough transition like how do i get over that hump at my mid career and i wanted to understand how they used the mentors how did they form the relationship how did it create an impact to their understanding of how they grow as a leader and more importantly how did it impact their career development and so what's the one thing you know we're always trying to find that one thing the one thing was their intention right the women who had a clear focus and intention of what they wanted right so the difference between having a conversation with someone and have it you walk away and saying wow that was really nice or wow i now understand what i need to do forward is starting with the men knowing what they want and christina that's our first principle is vision that your vision you have to set your vision right and and for some women they may not have they may not know specifically right i may think not there's like fourteen different options in front of me and i often say i'll say to women well that's your that's the place to start how do i how do i identify the next step for me in my career you don't really need to have a goal as an a role but you can have a goal in i wanna gain clarity on how to leverage my past experiences to the next stage that that's a starting point but that intention is then if i'm sitting down with julie i can say julie you know i'm i'm at a crossroads this is what i've done thus far help me unpack this help me figure out how i can approach creating a springboard to the next step in my career and then we can have a meaningful discussion yes it is so it is so important to have that clarity because mentors want to help and they're also not going to help you figure out what you're trying to figure out they are there to help you with what do you need to be helpful with but i'm so curious you went to look for this body of research it wasn't there and you because you had learned from a very young age that you just go ahead and do it i already love your parents you went ahead and did it so tell a little bit about your research so i i i interviewed about thirty women at the mid current stage and just looked at you know how did they approach and form mentoring relationship so you know we have that as part of our our program design and it was fascinating to me you know there were no two women who approached their mentors in the same fashion but the theme of intentional focus ran through all of them right what also was fascinating is each one of them even though this wasn't part of my research design shared with me their frustration right at the start of this like they were frustrated in their career they were getting passed over for opportunities and every single one of them said this and ended with and i was thinking of leaving my organization mh right because and this is an a maybe a bit of an over general but we know that for many women they don't get the feedback and career guidance in equal standing to their male counterparts women tend to get more transactional you did a good job versus here's some things you should be thinking about to prepare you for the next phase of your career and while that may be true we believe that women unlimited you know if if you want that aspirational guidance that you need to start asking for right you need to you need to tell people you know i'm interested in one of the women that was in my research that participated wanted to move into a senior role and when she shared with her manager her frustration that she wasn't being you know tee up for that opportunity her manager shared well because no one at the senior level who needs to approve that know you everybody in your area knows you but no one else knows you so how does that happen to so many people right where we work in our little cocoon and even post pandemic i think it's even more so mh and we're not building those web of relationships so that people understand current information about what we bring to the table what our aspirations are for our career so they can't support us and so with her mentor she was able to create a strategy that helped her get known right so that when her manager was right you know with when she was tee up for that opportunity it's sail it's sailed through so it's those kind of examples that are just you know really heartwarming that's how mentors can be helpful i love it also i i can totally see how cocoon nowadays are not leading the butterflies like they used to yeah we'll we're having some issues so i'd like to hear more about how your research influenced your current approach which is the you know the the three maybe legs of the stool are you tell me you described it of mentoring education and networking i i was really curious in the beginning when i i was getting to know you before we started talking that's i was reading and that you had mentoring and networking together because we find that there's confusion and often overlaps about what's networking what's versus what's mentoring so could you help kinda talk us through your framework and how those are separate sure so the programs that we provide for organizations have a framework of mentoring education and networking education is the competency components for the various levels early career mid career senior executive that is different right so there's different skill sets competencies that we focus on in each one and and that creates i i like to think about the work that we do we create catalysts of understanding for the women that and the mentors and their managers that participate we need to understand that we need a a variety of relationships as business people in particular in our work as business women to support our effectiveness in the roles that we're in we need to have a broad scope of of relationships i'm gonna call it our network that help keep us in formed augment our understanding our you are already your favorite guest for using augment oh so that so that we're we're not and it when i say network it's not just people inside our organization do you know people outside your organization maybe in your discipline right so that you know what's going on in your organization but you also have relationships that can help you keep a pulse on what is going on outside in your right very informed a network are individuals who see the world differently than you who can help broaden your perspective narrow your perception gap of situations and so they're they're different than mentors in that they're under say they're more colleagues right they could be more senior than you they could be more junior than you and in fact they should have a variety of levels right you shouldn't have people in your network you should your network should not be an echo chamber right i wanna make sure i people in it that are gonna challenge my thinking and my assumptions and then mentors are different and that these are developmental relationships these are individuals who because of who they are because of their expertise i can go to and talk with them about gee you know i'm getting feedback around the fact that i'm i'm a little intimidating when i communicate what are you seeing that i'm doing help me and unpack this so i can figure out how i can be more effective in the way that i'm communicating so that i can have a more i'm gonna say intimate conversation a more trusted conversation then oh much more vulnerability not that not that people in your network you won't have strong relationships with but and sometimes your network will evolve into a mentor people in your network so i think it's it's but just being clear around what the role is out how do these people feed your understanding and your growth and development i love it you do do you like the term networking as as just like hey hey i'm going to x y z to network or i'm networking here yeah i i never really thought about the word network and and it's so interesting because i know so many people have this adverse like reaction to networking oh i really hate it yeah you i think when it's superficial like when i'm just collecting cards yeah it feels sticky i never thought about like labeling it people but i always collected people who can help round out my understanding now i have a undergraduate degree in criminal justice i have a career in human resources i am not a technician so i needed to find people who can help me learn and understand how i could be affected so you know i just kept asking people who who do you know who does a lot of work in comp who can i talk to who does some work in like like leadership design who would you recommend so you know i'm i'm i'm always willing to learn and so i think being open to those introductions and then i'm always willing to connect people when i hear that they have a need so i think that it kind of builds a reputation of oh gonna resign as she knows someone who can do x y and z because she's a broad network of people that she works with and so i think when you have that relationship it beg gets then a bigger relationship and i think i think it's i think it's the kind of word that is evolving and i think that a to year point about the younger generation i think they're kind of figuring out a way to make it their own and to you know kind of the point of not judging them like for them it is very digital right that is like where a lot of their kind of networking happens and as it evolves into you know sort of real life but that at the same time they want those connected relationships and they wanna grow in their careers and we've seen i'm sure you have seen the same research and it's about eighty three percent of gen z in the workplace wants mentors and they wanna participate in it but they're probably approaching it a little bit of a different way i would love to have the opportunity to shift gears a little bit and for you to tell us a little bit more about your organization overall what kind of work you do how you got there the work is fascinating and this is like right up our alley so we'd love to hear more so we actually are celebrating our t year which amazing this work new believe i also celebrate my t ape just kidding plus it's yeah so you know the we were started by a a a woman by the name of jean ot who was a woman who ascended to senior roles in organizations she was in the c suite on the board and noticed that there were she couldn't understand why she was being successful and she thought there were other women that were brighter than her more talented than her why weren't they you know rising to the top as well and then she looked and she was like oh these women are doing things that are causing them to derail their career and no one is telling them and and and so this is i wanna this is to me now she passed away a few years ago but she was a mentor of mine and a phenomenal woman she decided that she was gonna start a company that would help women learn how to be leaders give them the feedback and the opportunity get those messages that no one was telling them right give them a a safe space right that they can get those messages here the things that they needed to hear so they can then move forward and become leaders now think about this this is over thirty years ago she had throughout her career she led she was a malcolm bald rich examiner she led learning she led quality she had a mess this this network of individuals so she decided i'm going to launch this business and she started meeting with people in her network this was she have a website did not have any marketing materials it was just her yeah and that's actually how i met her i was head of of out of hr for the and a chemical business and she came to my office told me about this organ this organization that she was starting the program was going to help women blah blah blah and she launched thirty years ago with thirty women in her in the first program twenty companies we now work with two hundred and fifty organizations globally and our programs are designed to help organizations increase their diverse talent pipeline right yeah create that momentum and we know that while the women attend the development experience their managers also attend a development experience not the same one right because the women are attending a program outside their organization the manager creates the bridge to that experience so that they can apply the insights that they're learning back into the organization they can be supported by the manager so we work with the manager to understand what that support looks like how do you make sure your cap ring the insight giving the women the opportunity to stretch out of their comfort zone maybe be exposed to leaders that they had not been exposed to beforehand to demonstrate their capabilities and then we also have the mentors that have also have a development piece within this and so all of that comes together to then impact the organization right we talked earlier about how important it is to create this inclusive culture and that's that sounds like it's easy to achieve but it's not it there's a shared understanding that each person in the organization needs to have on how they influence and support that inclusive culture and so we provide that insight in the work that we do because we touch every element of the organization that is wonderful and there's a quote that you use on your website that has jumped out at me when i first read it which was managers at all levels begin to shift from unconscious bias to conscious inclusion right and that is a really powerful shift i'm i i have a lot of i would say like you very specific questions i'd like to hear about that but what are some of the words what's like like how do you human that term like what are the words people say from your program that show that you have created that transformation from unconscious bias to conscious conclusion well you know it's so interesting because i think when we think of unconscious bias we we typically will think the first thing that pops into our mind is that you know it's the men who have bias against those that are don't look like that and and that's true right we all we all have bias women have bias around their own opportunities right we we sometimes underestimate what we can do are over analyze the opportunities that are in front of us and and and so we we try to unlock the biases that each person has to create a better platform for engagement for themselves and for others right so with the women you know helping them unpack kind of those biases that prevent them from you know stepping out of their comfort zone for the manager it's really about in a very safe way helping them understand how they can be a more even handed level creating a more neutral environment for everyone right so that they can make certain that they're they're eliminating the barriers that they did not see before you know i think i have a fundamental belief from when i was in hr that you know no one comes to work intentionally trying to create hardship for others they're just uneducated right so the more that we can help them see then the barriers just remove themselves right you know i didn't realize if i said something in a certain way that maybe it created a block to us being effective but once i know then you know that gives no better to do better and you know and and that again we always see so deeply these these mentoring relationships when you've and to really know somebody and really understand them they've been vulnerable with you they've shared where they see challenges that they're having both because of themselves or because of the environment because of you know where they come from and i think once you kind of have that in your head like oh i see what that's like than all the other people that you work with and you treat beyond that you're able to bring that framework because you've had that deep one on one it's like obviously you travel if you've been to hungry and then you meet hungarian and people like you're like oh my gosh i understand you way better than if i'd never been there before sorry it's a bad example but yeah it is really about that and we so believe this just makes your life richer it makes your experience as a human and as a worker and as somebody who goes to a place every day to get to really understand people better at least from our perspective i would love to hear one piece of advice you would give to new men in the workplace potentially in their first couple years of of work a women in the workplace and one piece of advice you would give to women who want to mentor other women so for especially for people early in their career is to find someone who can help you think bigger around the opportunities in front of you right to think beyond the transaction of the work that you're doing on a daily basis because what i do see happening for women still today as it as it was thirty years ago is that they come out of school and they start doing their work they get a job and they're focused on their work and they're focused on still getting that a doing their work and they're not building the relationships with other people that help them be informed about the opportunities in front of them and by the time they've realized that that's needed they've already put in five to ten years in their career so don't wait start building those find someone who can make you feel little uncomfortable because when you're you know growth and comfort do not coexist so if you if you you know want to continue to create momentum in your career or find people that can help you create it yeah and for women who want are looking to mentor those up and coming individuals don't assume that your story is the only story don't assume that your way is the only way and that's i would say that's true for anybody who's mentoring the goal of mentoring is to help people find their path not for them to duplicate yours yeah that would be a very boring experience it's a challenge to walk up uphill both ways you know everybody is that in the in the past but with no cell phone jimmy with no and no and and no shoes no nike terrible i like to play a little game towards the end of our conversations which is a rapid fire word association and so we have more four words i've already kinda made a joke about one of them i think you'll have a bit of more nuanced answer so i'm gonna say the word whatever comes to mind i'd love to hear back from you okay if i say the word mentor you say men well if i say the word men focus oh how about sponsor power and coach an accessory oh we haven't heard that but i like that and we often talk about the power of of a symbol in being able to we call it like unlock a more vulnerable conversation you use to term more intimate conversation our example is often the book in book club so mh yeah there's a book and it brings people together but you really are talking about a book your it just allows people to share a bit more deeply than they normally would have you found something for women progressing in organizations that there might be some way maybe mean whether it's a i'll even just lunch but is there some kind of specific symbol that allows folks especially who who work with your organization to be more ready to really express themselves to share openly i think the one thing that i see in our program especially i would say in this during covid in this post covid environment is how vulnerable the how ready the women are to be vulnerable so i i if i had a think of a symbol i i would think of like a spa right because you you go in there and you're you just relax into it so you can you're you're not afraid to be vulnerable because you're you're you kind you're you're getting into that zen kind of state and the self care right and i think knowing what of the another of the many reasons we're passionate about this work is knowing that close relationships are really tied to well being and we see mentoring as one way for those relationships to be so that when you feel like you're taking care of yourself and your well being and you're asking for help you're developing close relationships with people you're able to be seen and validated going back to the first part of our conversation i'd love that i i think i'd i'd rather go to a spa than a book club i'm sorry jimmy me i don't know all all the little fishes on the toes weird me out that that is a great answer we haven't heard that we have heard one probably a little bit more on the on the mail side of the barber shop as a way for folks be able to share so yeah yeah i love that thank you i think that's the other that's a the male version of the spot is the barber shop yep i love nice little fish honestly this has been a phenomenal conversation we are so happy to have met you and we would love to stay in touch and to hear about the kind of work that you're doing this and and that your research and just you know as a female leader who's actually worked almost exclusively outside of the corporate world because i did not see a path for myself within a corporation which has been fun i've got a chance to be an entrepreneur but to hear women who are really able to make a big impact within organizations and how meaningful that is that that kind of work especially as as a mom also two college age daughters it's exciting to see that work being done so thank you so much for your time today julie i was just blown away by the clarity of hr is the engine that drives people forward and people are supposed to be the engine of an organization so hr is literally about the progress of the organization's most precious asset it's people like why is this not so clear to anybody not just organizations but to individuals i was just about to ask you that exact question why are people not understanding that why are they so dev and getting more and more dev undervalued what's gonna happen we're not gonna have you know algorithm resources taking over you know it's it really is about the people in another good way to start is start a mentoring relationship and come with something that you wanna get out of that relationship you need to have a clear view of what you want it i think doctor ras says said it so clearly have a view of what you want to be a successful men and i what i feel like i really got out of this conversation is the fact that that there's like complications with generations within organizations right now right obviously you have gen z and you have young people who are coming in they have different expectations you have people you know of advanced advanced their age further along in their career who have done things a certain way and there's real tension and i feel like doctor was like no they are valid you can't invalidate them they are know the way that they do things is to how they're gonna do things and it's really important to be able to better understand them so in your point as you're really talking about the humans in the organization you have the senior leaders you have the new hires and new folks and how important having good communication and understanding and seeking to understand each other how important that is in the workplace you know today and then like the next twenty years so i loved how she said like we have you know as we have to be able to really understand that and you know they can work to understand us too exactly and the mentor role is to be in a mode of learning it's so wonderful if you feel disconnected from a group within your organization well reach out to somebody and become an individual's mentor why not help somebody along the way what's what what's the cost to you you're gonna actually learn and have way more return on your time than doing research or trying to figure something out about a group when just become part of that group by being a mentor to an individual go mentor somebody younger than you and be in a mode of learning from that younger person at your organization totally totally and i think this a women unlimited group was really cool i had not heard of it before so digging a little bit further i loved how they really integrated mentoring networking education kind of having this integrated approach between the three so having the opportunity to have mentors having people that are just part of your network and to be able to learn and understand so to your point like just really getting in the mix and really having those conversations gives you the opportunity to to understand each other better and go further faster together amen to that going back to o augment augmentation amen to that thank you doctor awesome wow you've made it this far and we thank you hopefully you enjoyed our episode and discovered new ways to bring more authentic connection into your mentoring relationships wanna tell him more jimmy be an au with us visit our website for the best interactive mentoring content at mentors dot us share our podcast with someone you care about like and subscribe and yes really you following our show and writing a review it's a big deal your actions provide us with the resources to continue our undefeated une en uncovered prize winning productions we welcome questions and suggestions via email high at dot us or on social with our handle at hq we are most active and available on linkedin and youtube shout out in earnest thank you to our intrepid producer e cad we appreciate you au augmented out see you

hello we are au augmentation and we build through mentoring i julie i'm jimmy and today we are joined by david aaron marketing educator consumer researcher coach and founder of intervention we are gonna get outside of our comfort zone and expand our thoughts on how mentoring can help others dave is an expert an educator and an exe cheerleader leader of mentoring just like we are at au here we go dave erin we are so happy to have you on mentors today you are a professor of marketing you are a business school professor and you are almost i'd say equally as passionate about mentoring as we are you are you are pretty into it you you reached out to us cold you were like these people are talking about mentoring i love mentoring and we're so happy to have you on today mh thank you so much julie and jimmy it's great to be with you i am i'm very much into mentoring and just now starting to kind of add it to i guess my my research portfolio my my consulting portfolio it's something that it's an itch issue i've been trying to scratch for a long time and i'm just getting a lot of satisfaction when i see how helpful it can be to people yeah and you're seeing what we're seeing which is something we were you know we always think about we've been chatting a lot about is the fact that the world is ai ai ai tech tech you know everything is saas and scaling and would have you and jimmy and i were just at a conference and we heard quite a lot about you know how ai is transforming in the workplace in this case health care but at the end of the day it's really people who have to run the technology you have to use a technology you have to program the technology and to be able to change that mindset and be able to build innovation through mentoring what do you think how why is mentoring so important right now i agree complete with what you're saying it's more and more opportunities for isolation when we need companionship and the in the human touch more than ever just kinda mention how i i can walk into a classroom these days and the the students i'd love to be able to talk to them and engage them in conversation before class starts but they're staring at their phones and more and more often they've got headphones on and it's almost running deeper into the into the hole instead of trying to emerge from it and i think that's that's the challenge that we're facing now getting people to be brave enough to step out of that hole and how do you see mentoring doing that well you know in a couple of ways one it's it's naturally it's a relationship i guess until the mentors themselves become replaced by ai and then the men become replaced by ai i mean that's just kind of our worst case an scenario there but is is that a business idea right there they we can we can set up mentoring for ai to ai they may get lonely but they won't know it it well you know it it's yeah it's the i guess by definition you know you've got a mentor in a pro a or men tea and so they've gotta have that relationship ideally organically developed through things that they have in common as opposed to the ai matched us together the algorithm matches together so now i'll let's go but yeah it's just in letting people know how much they have to offer each other and that's kind of the the perspective i'm trying to to come from and almost why i i you know i call my business intervention the mentoring intervention that i know i needed earlier in my career and i see so many people need now so dave you're setting us up for our favorite question to ask gas early in a discussion which is was there a mentor earlier in your life that saw something in you before you saw that same colonel or spark within yourself absolutely one hundred percent in my so in in teaching not to get too deep into the weeds you might have heard the old phrase publisher paris well in my first job i chose the latter i was not productive enough i was invited to leave and so as i looking for my next gig i found a one year appointment at another school and i'll even go back to my interview for that job a a guy named jeff who's the mentor i'm referring to walked into the conference room i was sitting and by myself and said i i looked at your resume you've taken a lot of bad advice oh wow in inter interviewing hard and now in retrospect what i should have said is well that's where you're wrong i haven't taken any advice at all oh i didn't say that i did not have my wits about me but i i did get hired for the job and jeff and one of his colleagues tim well i'm still very close to both of them basically grab me out of my office one day and said let's go we're got out to lunch we're gonna we're gonna straighten you out like an intervention and so using the the you know the coin of the realm is publications and the academics and and my first gig in six years i'd had only managed a couple and that's why it wasn't there anymore so the scars have healed they were right i understand in the in the one year it this next job i became very productive and i think we had five publications so that's the math i do it's like five in one year versus two in six years these guys figured out that i had something to offer in the academic setting and that's to me that was the mentoring intervention that i needed that i didn't know and even going back further because i worked in corporate before that is i think back and i like oh that's why they gave me that assignment or that's why they introduced me to that person they were trying to bring something out of me and i just didn't get it it took me a long time to kinda get it and i think i'm starting to now i'm so curious kind of in that moment in that conversation like what words did they use they actually say like what are you doing is what are you doing it was they you know the so the research that i did that i have done consumer behavior customer satisfaction and focusing more on customer dissatisfaction and you're getting narrower and narrower it's a it's a pretty thin niche that i was working in and so i didn't really know who else to to look at and part of what they did is help me understand that every rejection in this field anyway comes with a lot of suggestions as to what you should do to make it better mh and every time someone publishes that paper that you wish you had published that's a springboard for you to write your next paper and these are the kind of things that they taught me and that you know they they thought i had some good ideas and again in reality i am not a research superstar i'm in a teaching focused institution which is where i belong and that's kind of another thing too right it's you gotta find the right pond right it's a another good friend of mine told me it's not whether you're a big fish a small pond or small fish and a big pond it's just you're in the right pond and it took me a few tries to figure that out mh and again is is another salute to to jeff and tim they didn't have to do that it's not like i was a junior faculty member who to be developed i was on a one year gig very easy to ignore if they had wanted to but they didn't so that's what i try to give back paying it back more than paying it forward maybe but there's a little bit of both in there i've i've linked a lot of your quotes already but something you just said was i was easy to ignore is mentoring in a way like overcoming that kind of inertia of oh why not just put our head in the sand oh my i gosh absolutely and it's it's comes from both directions doesn't it and that is so one of the things i'm really working on is you know a reason people don't seek out mentors i'm sure you know is they don't think they deserve one they don't think they have anything to offer or they don't know what they're supposed to be asking what they're supposed to be doing and that's why i needed that intervention that's why i needed jeff and tim to to walk into my office and figuratively speaking pick me up off the floor i was not laying down in my office and just to say you've you've got some things worth doing here you've got some things worth building what what you haven't figured out is how to do it and i kinda go back to you know kinda went to grad school to figure out how to do it and it apparently it didn't stick very well until you know six years later people don't seek mentors and i don't know that i i guess some of us have a a natural tendency to wanna help people so maybe potential mentors seek out people to help as they did with me but again you if you don't think you have anything to offer it is really easy to again literally or figuratively put the headphones on and stare at your phone and hope magic happens how hardest part with these headphones nowadays is you came and see them at least i can see yours dave but you know these kids they you know you got no idea they're listening send to something else that's right they've got the the their airpods in or and i do see against some of the some of the the the beats some of the bigger headphones which it it's such a a signal right it's like a coffee shop signal too it's like leave me alone i'm wanna talk to you i got my own thing going on but what are you missing especially when you're in a classroom filled with your here's an old person way to say your future network is sitting in that classroom with you but it's it's hard to realize that yeah and it's just gonna change right i think there is an element of like it's going to change so how do we help this generation figure out the ways that they're gonna do that and it's gonna be different than how we've done it because i don't think it's gonna go back and i think it's going to be then finding ways that these kind of connections can happen and they're gonna be a bit different obviously there will be a tech enabled piece of it but at the end of the day the principles of asking questions listening showing up and carrying about each other are really the same principles so i think you know i always feel like okay it's there's you know this change is happening how do we help them adapt and they will feel all that right over time and i think we're already seen that sort of the loneliness and the disconnection and then finding ways to be able to connect i have daughters in college so and i've one who's a massive ex and never wears headphones and talks to every single person who you know probably to the point of her friends were like oh gosh and the other one is quite you know introverted and and definitely definitely a headphone wear but yeah you know and they both kind find their ways to find their people as well but going back to you and going back to the mentoring i love this story and i love how you really were able to say like okay this is the right space for me like maybe i thought corporate was right for me or maybe i thought this other you know high pressure university was right for me and then you know it takes time to kinda find the right spot for you and it sounds like while you've been there you've been able to really do some research on mentoring and that that's been something that you've been able to engage and we'd love to hear a little bit more about your research oh thank you very much yes just to i guess the next chapter is that story after that year was over i did end up at dominican university or i've been for eighteen years that's the right sized pond and i can hold a job so positive in all kinds of ways and we love that it's thank you so the research has been it's just getting started again i've been doing the research on customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction for a long time and what i'm recognizing again so as a marketing professor i kind of see everything through that lens i thought well there's a lot of marketing involved in mentoring and in vice versa even to the point you know when you go to the grocery store how do you decide which box of cereal to buy if you're seeking a mentor or seeking a pro j how do you know who to work with and it might be assigned to you in kind of a formal mentoring program but organically again how do you get the the courage to go out there and find that person that you can help in in either direction and to me that's you know that's consumer decision making i remember it is a few years ago as the ideas are just kind of starting to formulate in my head i reached out to a couple of of people who had written in the area of mentoring and i said do you see this as a marketing issue and the answer is generally no it's management oh okay interesting could it be well it is and so and when you look at where it gets published it's organizational behavior it's human resources management it's magic and that makes perfect sense you don't see it in the marketing journals and part of get a marketing colored glasses i i look through it's like no you know what i think this is marketing i think that's where it could be helpful and if it turns out that no marketing journal wants to publish what i write then i'll figure that next it's the it's the activity that counts more than work it's published right now but i really see it's it is decision making just like you do when you're making a purchase of some kind see if that works yeah so how then when a customer goes into make a purchase you said buy some cereal off the shelf there's you know that implied value proposition of once this cereal is yours x y z is improved for you right yeah so what is the value prop that is supposed to smack mentors in the face like lucky charms that oh now that i'm a mentor i now receive this i thought you're going more down the all brand got held thing those lucky charms but that's okay we wanna help cool now i've got the image of of lucky the le con waving a magic wand and lucky charms pouring all over me childhood favorite that's a great question jimmy mean the and the value proposition is is really what do you get out of this what are the outcomes and the the phrase i've been using is is keeping your hands on the wheel or getting your hands on the wheel of your career again kinda looking at at it from the men t's perspective is why do you need a mentor aren't you busy enough and you know and how do you know this person's gonna work out conversations i've had with with past students that have been in the workplace for a while and a lot of times i say yeah i've got a mentor wonderful change my life but too often it's you know not really if i have a question i'll ask my boss or i'll ask a former boss or i'll ask a friend and then on the next one and even more disheartening is well i had a mentor and they didn't work out they kinda screwed me over they're just using me to to do their work for them which are hear too often interesting and it so it's the outcome it's having more control over your career it's finding someone to blaze that trail for you to let you know that this is you know this is a risk worth taking maybe this is a path you don't wanna go on it's the outcome it's gotta be about the outcome the mentor is a means to that end just like a you know you might wanna have a lovely relationship with she to guide you up a mountain but what you really wanna do is get to the top of that mountain so do you believe then that the clarity of value proposition is more important to demonstrate for the men or the mentors that's a great question i think it's gotta be both and again it kind of goes to if you look at the the people in this room right now it's our nature to wanna reach out and be mentor and and help people and guide people but that's really there are people that have a lot to offer that maybe haven't even considered that's a way to share it and then i think more clearly the men again that's the the perspective i've seen a little bit more up it's like you you've got something to offer you just don't recognize it yet and it could be your own your own youthful full enthusiasm your knowledge of ai of digital marketing things that may be in of headphones of headphones as of which brand we should buy yeah yeah there there's so much to be shared from different perspectives i think there's a little bit of a confidence question i think that it sounds like it's coming up and that's a little bit about what you're talking about from the men standpoint and is sides on both sides on both sides that it is a little bit of confidence yeah and the confidence of am i you know i think i think you have a moment at different points in your life which sounds like davey were just even sharing about yours and i know obviously jimmy and i have both had those where you're like i'm a lost like i'm a little lost i you know no certain things and i'm missing some some certain things and i think having confidence to say there's somebody out there who can probably help me and being able to be clear about what you're asking for and who are the right people to ask and then on the mentor side a hundred percent just to have the confidence to know that you have something to offer and something we talk a lot about is the idea of mentoring related to well being right it's like yeah you know now we're thinking a lot you know you wanna take walks you wanna meditate you wanna make sure you have time in nature and you wanna have time giving back to others and mentoring is a really important way to do that volunteer but i think having that confidence of i have something to offer and if i don't have anything real concrete to say i can just listen i can just validate what somebody saying i don't have to have like a ro x full of the right people and the right contacts and the right you know resources i can just actually listen and that's enough may demonstrate all those who wander are not lost i'm validating and listening to you to be the at least seventy five percent of the time that's i think i'd be killing if i was doing that that would be like wouldn't the awards as say oh my god i know you are i know you are just i just say the same things over and over again so that helps and that tom's but but no i think it is a confidence piece and it sounds like even you know you may at that moment right i would imagine like you had you were somewhere and then you weren't there anymore and then you're in a one year position and maybe that wasn't like your most confident moment but you were able to go to lunch with those people or be able to sit with them and hear they had to say don't think that's a little bit the mindset shift you have to be open to that and yeah and that's one of the things i do try to to tell the people i'm working with is we've all seen that analogy right that your comfort zone there's a circle around you and that's your comfort zone and it's scary to step out of that comfort zone and and i've also seen you know memes online that say you know here's your comfort zone and then far away is where the magic happens have you've seen that that graphic but i would i would argue that outside of your comfort zone there's another circle that i call your safe zone and you can step out of your comfort zone and still be in your safe zone you won't know it till you try it and then as you step out into that save zone the comfort zone gets bigger right now it it kind of reaches out and and you're standing in a comfort zone again and your safe zone gets bigger too and it keeps growing like that the further you're willing to take little steps out of that comfort zone to take little chances and that's where mentor can really help too by reminding you that you know the reason they ask you to do that task is because they think you could do it they wouldn't ask you if they didn't you know they wouldn't put their career or at least some of their social capital on the line by asking you to do something that you would fail at and you just need examples of that until the message gets through i absolutely love this line about there's a safe zone outside of your comfort zone and when you it needs to be repeated and when you go outside that comfort zone into the safe zone you actually stretch your comfort zone and stretch your safe zone i think that just so powerful and i kinda picture like like a puddle like a sticky puddle of soap and now if you can like push it a little bit you know that then the puddle kinda gets bigger and as you continue kinda like dance in inside and and then get out the puddle the puddle gets gets gets larger absolutely what are ways you mentioned social capital what are ways because i feel like as you feed social capital you're probably expanding your comfort zone and your safe zone so what are good ways for people to feed their social capital and to you know really stretch these boundaries you know it's a great question jimmy i think it it's being willing to try new things being willing to meet new people i mean and that's how you build social capital it's and it it's not just the the ro as julie was saying before it's just the fact that i can reach out to this person and ask them a question and they can reach out and ask me one and doesn't it feel good to be able to answer someone else's question it's it sounds so simple to say but when you're in the moment it could be scary to do especially if you have just moved from one job to another or you you're the new kid on the block or something like that you know trying to gauge what are my expectations for myself what are other people expecting of me a little a little level of fearless out of the comfort zone and david think something that you're really passionate about that we're passionate about as well is going beyond just one mentor kind of having a group so tell us a little bit more about your thoughts on that oh on thanks for asking this is this is kind of where i'm i'm starting out on the the mentoring chapter of my research career and i'm developing a framework that i call infuse i guess as a marketer i have to have an acronym for everything so spell the word we thank you and and if the feedback i get suggest that i have to change something that i will just think of a new word we're flexible like that but i know i call it the the infused framework of building i i've been calling get a shopping cart that's the the marketing side of it or a network a constellation i think is what they call it in the literature of mentors and it could be you know if if you find one person to fill all six of these roles actually don't think that can happen i think some are a little exclusive or if it's multiple people feel fitting fitting in the same role but the eye stands you so it's infused and the eye stands for industry you should have a connection with somebody who is in your industry even if they're not in the same firm to kinda give you a broader perspective of what you're doing and also to kinda let you know that that's you know what you're experiencing is maybe is the way things go throughout the industry or is not and maybe it's a red flag of some kind so almost like julie might need a mentor within podcasting and to realize that being listened to seventy five percent of the time by your c host is like really good to be asked no that's a seat how are you noticing student but i passed that's c's get degrees but we can't think like that jimmy i've been i mean jeez for diploma but we're not here for that either so go ahead okay so so so there's someone in your industry and i do wanna give a a quick shout out to an even earlier mentor named keith who published the journal that i had my one publication in in my first job and when i learned i was gonna lose that job i reached out to him even though we had only interacted a couple of times and he responded by with like a three page when you printed out three page email just kind of saying listen it happens to a lot of us that's how it goes here's the path you know you're you're you're doing this well here's are some things you might wanna think about again no financial obligation no you know no job mandated obligation to help me but i think that also gave me some of the courage to listen when jeff and tim came into my office a year later or yeah it was about a year later so someone in your industry he he worked out in utah he was a professor so so industry then the and and infuse means somebody who's nearby and that is either physically or virtually you need to reach out to somebody at a at a moments notice you know they'll return your call without world return your text message so someone who's is nearby and we're not really defining it much more severely than that just yet but yeah so somebody who's nearby i kind of use the the popular culture of if you watch the ted lasso show or ted lasso series when it was on just ted lasso and and roy kent the soccer player on his team who needed some direction and found that coaching was what he was meant to do this career because they saw each other all the time so n is for nearby and then f is for somebody who is in your firm that can kinda show you the ropes show you you know politically speaking they're a little bit closer they kind of they know how things work in the area that you're at so i and and f are all kind of professionally guided you know someone in your industry someone who's near nearby someone who's in your firm and things start to spin a little bit now as i get to the second half so the you is for someone who will give you unconditional support and in the literature you're not always gonna see that because maybe that's not a mentor if they're giving you unconditional support when maybe what you need is a kick in the behind but sometimes a kicking the behind is what you need and you might get that from that person or you might get it from someone else in your in your infuse framework but so it's not like unconditional you know unconditional like positivity and wanna say unconditional love because i guess it's you know i guess we can decide whether and not love has a has a plates with your mentors but unconditional support it's somebody who gives you or you said unconditional support so that they they will give you real feedback not always tell you how how fabulous you are that's more helpful because sometimes when you get told how fabulous you are you start to believe it and you don't realize that maybe you are going in the wrong direction then again it's always good to have someone to come home to that'll tell you that you're great and they're glad you're home that's they're happy one you work talk are the best absolutely or two year olds take it that that's right they're when they're too whether it's do you have some youngsters at home jimmy me i have a two year old yeah so who who has just realized that if she asks you know is data at home she usually gets brought to like see me in my office which is like very very sweet that's awesome well that's awesome yeah so it helps that's my unconditional work to keep working yeah that's why we're doing this yeah fiona you in my life yes awesome beautiful so the s is for someone who's got similar responsibilities as you do again we kind of benchmark what if you're doing the right thing if your partner's listening enough to what you're saying you know those sort of things so there's some overlapping and this isn't super scientific just yet that's that's the next stage right we come up with the ideas and then we test them so the s is for similar and then the e is to me one of the most important ones and that's for someone who is extraordinary in the same way you are so you need someone who has that uniqueness that you have so you don't feel quite as different that spells infuse mh i like it i like it i think it's a great way of thinking about it because i think some of the fear again going back to the confidence of being somebody's mentor is that you have to play all these roles or you have to know all the things i have a the phenomenal mentally i was actually was just just speaking with and it was clear where i can help her and it was clear where i could not help her and helping her kind of find those other people that are yeah in you know a lot of the areas that she's looking for i think i i think that's a really nice framework not only for obviously for men mentors use to kind of think about having all of those of people but then also for mentors to help their men find other people specifically that can help them with different things and what they could help them with and just being really honest about that that not one person can obviously fill all your needs i'm so glad you said that because you get i'm writing this from the position of the men t but i love how you just phrase you can be a mentor and not be all things yeah you could you could be the person this woman's running a nominal black hair platform where she is you know selling this incredible platform of black hair stylist for black hair brands and i do not use black hair product so i specifically not a person can help her with the user experience but there's so many other you know other people and ways just to make sure she's finding the right people and then there are ways i can help her as a business owner and and somebody who who understands that but being okay with kind of and helping her with that framework to say like you actually need somebody who is working directly in this space you somebody's working for one of these brands and you need somebody who you know who who is also you know an entrepreneur in the same situation you are in but i love that i think that's a really cool framework and if there's another problem that that you can't solve for your men you might be able to recommend someone else who can or encourage them to find someone else who can that might not be in your network yet but maybe by the end of the week they will be in your network because of that hub that is your pro j i love it what do you think to me i'm thinking about how this plays into how we began a conversation about isolation and how you know infused literally is like you know to join to bring together you know it can you say like how you talk about isolation and this you know epidemic of loneliness that our surgeon general in united states talks about how can infuse and this model directly combat you know some of these feelings that people are experiencing well one thing that occurred to me is that you don't wanna to be so dependent on one person that because that person might move they might decide that they don't have time so many things could happen it's it's you know it's kind of a from the business school side it's a diversified portfolio and that of course means that now you're you're building relationships with more than one person which could mean alright i've gotta step out of my comfort zone and i gotta do it again and i've gotta do it again but like we're were talking about before the more you do it the easier it should get because you're recognizing that it's okay these people are helping me and and they don't bite at least no one's spit me yet and they're all human i mean is is yeah simple as that might sign as people they're just people altered yeah and they they maybe they have a head start on you either by being born before you were or starting at a particular job before you did but it's and i've had in my career it seems like i've always been either the oldest or the youngest wherever i am very rarely in the middle and that you kinda learned that you've gotta have something to offer that's why you're here that's when that's why you're in the room because someone thought you belonged in the room interesting so i wanna come back to marketing for a minute when you apply your marketing chops two mentoring what would be the like one word that you'd recommend people do not use around mentoring or a phrase and then what would be one word or phrase that you recommend people do use around mentor i'm i'm gonna go with forced versus organic or natural forced mentoring relation they can work and they they have worked i'm sure you've seen many more examples other than i have but a lot of times you just have one and possibly two people that don't know why they're in that relationship not sure why it occurred and unfortunately i have seen and and been part of some scenarios like that you know you need someone to show you the ropes and that could happen that doesn't mean you're gonna have a longer less relationship with that but the organic relationships where however you might have met maybe it did start as you were introduced and and told to be a mentor or be a a men mentor to somebody and it grew from there but that's the beauty of it if it can grow and you can learn more about each other and start again sharing some of that social capital willingly think that's the the most productive and most flourishing kind of relationship dave i wanna wrap up with our rapid fire word association before i get to or open ended question so four words i think you know the drill so what comes to mind to say it if i say the word mentor you say guide guide guide how about men student oh am i answering to fast in my oldest repair no okay no no this is this your actually the i don't think we've heard that one the most guests yes no student's great how about the word sponsor sponsor oh that's a good one believer and coach can i use teacher again i didn't use teacher the first time i'll say teacher for coach okay i love it we often talk about you know the need to kind of unlock a situation to make people be more prepared to share vulnerable to actually kinda get to like the the meaning the importance behind something and we like to use the symbol of books in book club as you know just by talking about a book bringing it up it brings people together and people start sharing quite rapidly things well beyond the actual content of the book do you have any symbols or physical tokens that you might bring to a classroom or bring to some early meetings with students or with potential men to kind of like unlock those feelings of okay yeah that it's it's it's okay to share this is i and is not the pressure to say hey you know dave opened your soul it's it kind of reduces that because of this symbol i've got two things that come to mind and one is if you can see it on the video my my logo is behind me and yeah and that's someone reaching out oh it's meant to it's like looks like the letter m for intervention and but somebody reaching out is an invitation to open up and then i think just something we talked about earlier just listening being willing to listen and encouraging people to to share and and that in its cell phone always break down barriers but again the more you the more opportunities you have to listen understand where somebody coming from and let them know that i am listening and i believe what you're saying and you i'm a partner in this conversation i think is how you can get people to open up and and overcome some of those barriers i love it so i don't think you're gonna answer this question with something about ai though everybody else does when when i say you know think to the future mh you won't say ai but think of the future in twenty fifty you know about twenty years from now thirty years from now what will mentoring look like will we have headphones in and that's how we all be talking to each other or you know what what do you think would be an ideal situation oh my gosh well the and an ideal situation is is face to face shoulder to shoulder conversations that might be a very eighties or even nineties way to put it right because i mean you can now have apps for your for your counseling sessions yep and i'm concerned and i i'm not the first person to have this idea but that that how we determine excellent is gonna kinda come down because there is so much ai and it it i'm i'm concerned it's gonna homo homogeneous everything and that if if you've got an issue to deal with you're gonna get the algorithms gonna give you an answer that it gives to all of the x number of people that are like you based on all of the data they have on you so i guess that's a concern but who knows how it'll play out i'd there actually there are probably people who do know how it'll play out and they're developing it right now but that that being in the same room kind of contact there's nothing like it and i hope that even in this era of zoom and ai and everything else that's going up i mean i wish you would flown me out to the east coast i didn't ask but just one mom wishes that i came to see you or so you know you never know where we'll be and when we'll be there but honestly davis was such a great conversation we so appreciate you reaching out we so appreciate what you do with mentoring and we are excited to continue to stay in touch and and hopefully to know more of research and how do people reach out to you what would be the best way for people who are interested learning more to find out more they can learn more about me i do have a website called mentor intervention dot com right now it is a mostly just my blog but as i start to add to my what i do you know my portfolio of things be in addition to teaching so that's something i'd i can never imagine giving up but as i do more workshops and and presentations and things like that that's where it would go mentor intervention dot com that's so where you can find me amazing thank you so much thanks for your time and mentor on well jimmy i have to say i was a little bit distracted by dave chicago accent being a chicago in myself it felt very much like home but i really appreciate how much he loves mentoring amen to that i thought you're gonna say you were distracted because as a kid you're going to the discovery zone which was a great place and nowadays they should change any kind of what are those like lock rooms or like oh rooms yeah escape rooms an escape room change should be called the deception zone i was not thinking that maybe you're thinking that are you projecting on me hello the opposite of the comfort zone is the deception zone and you need to get outside your comfort zone to expand your safe zone and your comfort zone i think that was such a great line because it helps understand how when you're entering a new relationships potentially mentoring relationships you need to understand that you might not be fully comfortable that you're starting to share it's trying to be a little vulnerable and try and tell me this is where i wanna go you know this is how i wanna get there this is the impact i wanna have this is why this potential relationship matters to me and putting yourself out there but if you don't do that and you always stay within this very tight comfort zone it's gonna be really hard to have an outs sized return on your activities totally totally and i think i think you and i are willing to very large leaps outside our comfort zone and i think not everybody is and that's okay too like you can take a little baby step outside your comfort zone it doesn't have to be like completely trying something super new or moving across the world or you know wearing pants without a belt i mean you know it can be like a very it could be a very small you know step outside the comfort zone so i really appreciated that but mostly i loved his model i had not heard we had not heard something along those lines we've definitely heard about a tribe of mentors we've definitely heard about like the mentoring committee we've heard about you know having a group of mentors but i liked this model because i think it gives you framework to make sure that you have the variety of mentors that you need because not one person can follow all your needs mh and i thought it was great too that dave was bringing in like some classic economic research and heuristic for thinking through problems by looking at mentoring sometimes as consumer choice know why would somebody want to be my mentor and if you as a men t can rationalize that to yourself it's gonna become clear so fast to your mentor why that mentor wants to be giving time to you definitely and i know dave works with a lot of students and grad students and so i think the fact that he has this mindset and he's teaching and he's instill this into you know kind of new folks working in the marketing space it's great because it allows a mentoring to continue on with like the next generation so yeah i really enjoyed his approach and i loved how again he just like he loves mentoring and he's doing a lot of research i'll be excited to follow along amen to that dave there'll be a stranger au is out wow you've made it this far and we thank you hopefully you enjoyed our episode and discovered new ways to bring more authentic connection into your mentoring relationships wanna tell him more jimmy be an au with us visit our website for the best interactive mentoring content at mentors dot us share our podcast with someone you care about like and subscribe and yes really you following our show and writing a review it's a big deal your actions provide us with the resources to continue our undefeated une uncovered prize winning productions we welcome questions and suggestions via email high at dot us or on social with our handle at au hq we are most active and available on linkedin and youtube shout out in earnest thank you to our intrepid producer e cad we appreciate you au augmented out see

hey we're au we build mentoring i'm julie and i'm jimmy and on today's show we welcome annie carlin partner at cruise solutions an outsourced accounting firm that values human development and prosperity julie i was thinking should we name this episode my black friday sale failed or should we just call it annie the money i say annie the money mentor amen that annie is money she has seen the financials behind hundreds maybe thousands of businesses and she gives us a mentoring lesson for the ages on how dollars can help you become vulnerable and really for real shape your business for the better here we go so annie you've explained that the folks are coming to you raw in that state where they are first talking to you where are they normally going to find community where are they normally going to find people who just are there for them like find a mentor when they're in these states of again maybe disarray is incorrect but they're in an uncomfortable state yeah i think that's a huge challenge because they're all presenting this facade to the world and it's part of this fake it till you make it so even when i have the opportunity to maybe introduce two two founders that i'm like you might really like to work together you know you're both maybe dealing with the same inventory management issues and you're both maybe looking and i'll i'll introduce them like under the guise of this person uses this inventory management system that you're looking at go talk to them and usually that creates some kind of common bond but the reality is both of them are likely faking it fish bowl brings everybody together i wasn't good to say fish but like yes fish brings everybody's to a sponsor no sponsor continental no no no no i hope i don't get see for no it's it's it's a really i mean inventory management is probably one of those like big things that nobody is getting right nobody is doing it perfectly and so but i think there's this this belief that like okay i'm faking it but no one else is faking it and i know the truth so i think if i make the introduction then they can kind of be a little bit more vulnerable with each other and like yeah my black friday friday failed did not work for me i am looking for hard money through shopify i don't know like just it's you know it's sometimes very bleak but i think it is very very hard for i mean any founder to kind of find a community because they could be really struggling most small businesses are having a hard time with cash right especially in consumer product so mh yeah i also think it's why we create a pretty strong bond because they don't have to fake it for me you know they don't have to pre pretend we all know the situation we can jump right to the heart of it and then you know i can say like you're not around a lot of people struggle with it don't worry well that's what i was gonna ask you annie like so you have four actual children and then a lot of other children it sounds like that you do think and like what kind of words do you use like what kind of phrases do you use to help people feel disarmed comfortable yeah what is some of the language so there's always this fear like right before i see the books right and and so what of the things i say is the worst yeah who's fear your fear or the fear of the of founder the the fear of the founder right that that maybe it's been their mom that's been doing the bookkeeping for a while or maybe they've tried to do it or they've got like a smaller local bookkeeper and they're trying to raise money and they're not getting you know the they they don't have the data that they need to sorry my computers no funded okay yes now they don't have the data that they need to go get their seed you know their seat router or they're their series a round right so that's why we're kind of entering the conversation and there's always this fear and they'll preface it with all of these like typical phrases like you know we really haven't spend a lot of time on this or the last person really screwed it up and didn't know what they were doing and we you know and so once i start hearing those phrases i know that there's a fear right they're were like a little bit of shame that they don't have and i had to say guys this is why i have a business is because i you shouldn't know how to do this i know how to do this this is why i have this is why we exist we have a hundred and fifty clients that are just like you so it's okay and then i'll say there is one worst client that we ever had it's icelandic skis they were the worst and we're like they've held the title for eleven years nobody is as bad as them yours won't be as bad as them and we tuesday say they they were at icelandic excuse they were a ski company yeah i like how what they were the worst what happened like it was when we got the book were just so we almost had to redo the books from for like the the five years prior i mean it was just the most messy bit of numbers that and they were trying to raise money on these numbers and like so when we got them we kind of we we were like okay well you have the crown of being the worst do they know this yeah oh yeah and i mean now they're great you know we got them oriented and then they kind of graduated and got in house staff and they're they're doing great in colorado it's a great powder skis company so it's such a success story but i think that even just with that little bit of humor i can kind of say like it won't be the worst i promise mh and then it kinda gets permission to jump right to the heart of the problems like where are your skeletons where are your junk drawers what are you worried about what what do you know is not correct right now and so we don't want to dance around anything and kind of just get right to it i love that especially the shame like that's really i think that is like even as a business owner who early on you know would say self proclaimed not a numbers person running the books like for the first couple of years it just being like i do not know what i'm doing and like yeah i'm good at a lot of things but that's not one of them and you feel embarrassed because especially as a founder you sort of feel like you should you feel like you should be able to do everything you should know how to do everything yeah and it's really hard to admit especially your numbers because that's really like ugh did not know those yeah so yeah i think just yeah just helping like kind of remove that shame yeah i like that with a little bit of humor i thought that was a great disarming tool and that when you hear those phrases you start to know where this is going and you have like your icelandic key your tool ready to talk about you know crushing the pal instead of you know how messing their books are yeah what are some other phrases maybe that you've used to help help like reduce the the hurdle reduce the emotion behind the give your quickbooks password because because i've seen you on these intro calls and you are so smooth and calm you're like a big fluffy blanket on like a cold day bet in colorado yeah justine skiing your team yeah so i think the method that i take normally i'm having an intro call because i've been introduced to somebody we grow almost exclusively by referral so it's a warm introduction normally and they want an estimate they they need help for some reason and they want an estimate for the cost of our services so part of it is i gotta get i have to end there i have to be able to have enough information to give them an and normally there's a story so i try to i try to hear the story i don't have to hear the story i could probably give them the estimate without the story but the story is important to them and it's important to our relationship i think you have to have build this trust like again they're gonna show me the thing they're they're may be embarrassed about so they have to know that i'm gonna like take that seriously and so like i could probably even at this point i've been doing it so long tell them how much it would cost how much time it would take our team to support them on a monthly basis without even looking at their books i could just like you could tell by the story by where they are in the story they're even telling you the story exactly exactly yeah so yeah i i want them to know that i'm am taking this seriously and and i do and i do so how i lead the conversation is i start to ask a few questions like what systems do you use and do you have any concerns what hasn't worked in the past and then that usually brings some stories like we're in the middle of changing systems i'm kinda traumatized by this other system are really messed up now we have this new system systems don't fix anything they're just wish thinking normally but you're like okay i'm i'm starting to understand like what kind of founder this is and then i'll say listen i can pepper you with a lot of questions a lot of the answers you probably don't know or if you can just give me access to your current set of books i can just answer my own questions and then come back to you faster you know and at that point they usually pick i'm just gonna let you see the books because when i say you may not know some of the answers it's true they probably don't know a lot of the answers of the questions that i need to ask but i think that that disarm them a little bit like i'm giving them permission to not know everything about what's going on in the books and they don't there's no way they do right even even former clients that or even clients that were former cpa don't know everything that's happening in the books because they're not doing the books and if they are they're probably not doing a good job so i think that yeah so i think that maybe it's not just i don't have like a lot of token phrases but it's really more of this like path that we kind of walk down together and then a lot of times we'll look at the books together so we are like all all kind of drive and share my screen that's been you know zoom has been at a helpful tool because i'll say okay so what is this loan you know there's a loan on here and the balance hasn't changed for three years like what's this loan and it's like oh it's my dad my dad gave me this money you know you're like okay that is emotional money right we are looking at like she owes her he owes his dad money they have not been able to pay their dad back yet and there you know sometimes that's like very emotional or moving down like what is this loan and you're like well you know i had to make ends meet we took hard money it's a fifteen percent interest rate and you're like okay that's okay you had to do what you had to do you know but you can see how like it slowly disarm them and then i get the the answers that i need also it tells me like what kind of a client are they gonna be like what kind of relationship would this look like when we have to give them bad news because we will right we're gonna show financials and sometimes the financials are not good so sometimes they're great and it's super fun but sometimes they're not and and so part of it i'm engaging is like how are they gonna react to our team are like wonderful staff accountants are wonderful accounting managers that i adore how are they gonna when we're showing them that like maybe this is gonna be hard okay how many people have cried in those conversations do you see a live tears i almost wanna cry just listening to this it's very emotional yeah i money is emotional but also it's like it's like the story of their business their baby that we're like and i'm i'm judging it right it's tough i don't think i i don't think a lot of people cry i have to be honest that doesn't happen and maybe i can keep it light enough that we don't like i was gonna say that's good but yeah she's a hundred grand a month or worry that i'm like you just like month yeah i my son jonah when he was in first grade they did this like mother's day poster and it was awesome they had to draw a picture of me and then all the moms and had to answer questions about the moms like what do they do for work what is their favorite you know hobby i don't it's and then they posted all of these posters up around the classroom and what your first grader thinks you do is hilarious but he says my job was counselor he's like my mom's counselor and i was like i'm not a i just thought it was so funny and then i was like i actually think i am a counselor i actually think them it's what i well was definitely thinking about both like you're going to the doctor doctors like what's that rash you know like you're gonna have to tell them like what is going on and or yeah of course obviously if you're company's to see a therapist for the first time you're not there because everything's like going great and like you're excited to you know yeah yes anybody is your person or even a doctor you can put something in a box you know you don't have to like you don't have to barf it all out at the at the first meeting and like we haven't even engaged in a relationship yet and i am seeing everything so it's a vulnerable conversation but i think that listen these guys are starting businesses they're in the arena they're getting dirty they are like doing it and i've done it i i know it's really really hard and i'm so proud of them for doing it and for just pushing themselves and for having the dream and doing it so in the end i don't care that they took money from their dad that they took hard money or like that maybe the books aren't tidy or that they're struggling like they're still open and they are like trying to grow they're trying to get better by having this call with me and maybe working with us to get better so i think that's probably the underlying respect that i can give them that lets them kind of let the regard down with me do you i jimmy you've been there is do you feel like that's what you feel on the other side has jimmy cried a call no maybe i it was because silently i think yeah i've tried to black out our early calls any those are those were really emotional on my end for sure you gave me the feeling that there was a way to move forward and it would not get in the way of my business it would only help my business and at that time as a founder like i think a lot of founders that come to you my life was my business you know yeah i might have had some personal things going on like maybe a shot of basketball from time of time but you know you was working seventy ninety hours a week there's not a whole lot of extra time so you made it feel that if you could make my business simpler and more comfortable and that it was okay that my life was also simpler and gonna be more comfortable and okay and i do remember this piece because i know exactly where i was i was on a stair well at an ex girlfriend's house talking to you and i was like okay annie trust ball is gonna begin and i'm just gonna jump and i remember that yes and and i had to get myself mentally ready to jump but you made it i mean it couldn't have been that many phone calls you made it very clear to me that the trust ball would go well and and i had caught to a place pretty quickly that even if i jumped that i didn't get caught i wouldn't be in a worse place when i landed then when i was starting to jump so why not yeah yeah and one thing that is that's amazing and that is so hard as you said when you're founded we actually had a i guest on a couple episodes ago joy marcus who teaches entrepreneurship at princeton and it was really fun hearing her talk about the princeton entrepreneurs and how hard it is for them to be entrepreneurs because they are used to being perfect and getting straight a's and right that it's like this is not the entrepreneur crew who's ready to like fail and everything to go wrong although way she has a phenomenal i'm sure instructor in entrepreneurship but yeah i feel like this so much is about mentoring around money right and i think like even if you are you know not an accountant and you're not a financial professional but you are mentoring and and i think we're starting to see some traction working with working with incubator and accelerators and folks who are mentors to business owners and they can talk about a lot of different things but they they're not obviously always financial people is there some general questions that you ask or advice you you give or advice you would give a mentor who's talking to a business owner just around money yeah just some like basic things that aren't obviously the specifics of like going through their books yeah but just to help them maybe make some of those connections around money yeah i mean money is emotional yeah we a hundred dollars down on black that's what i say and do not keep your gold and your cash in the same place in your house don't do that oh just those are two great okay so we're done there you go just always got well i think that most of us didn't up in houses where our parents talked about money i think it was a little bit of like a faux pas on some level at that time so and if they did it was because they had no money and they were like we have no money and i think that still happens when there is an abundance of money they don't talk about it when there's no money we talk about it so but in general i just don't think that it's a conversation that's had very often at at home and so it can be kind of and it's not a conversation you have like with your friends a lot of the time you're not like sitting around just talking about money so i think it is maybe a sensitive topic to a lot of people to grow into it when i was saying that i could probably categorize female founders into different buckets one of the one of the buckets is the founder who grew up poor and their mentality is to be poor and to be broke and they don't accumulate wealth they just don't and so one of the conversations i'll have with that founder is one i'll say call it out you know and i'll say listen you have a mentality of broke and you have a business that wants something else so i'll have the conversation of bun abundance and scarcity right and i i don't know if you guys have ever talked about this or study this but you have two world views right scarcity or abundance and the scarcity mindset is there is only a limited amount and i've gotta get mine i've got a fight and get my peace and the abundance mindset is there is plenty there is so much there is room for you and me there is plenty of opportunity we have plenty of customers we have plenty of ideas we have plenty of ways that we can make this business make a lot of money and scarcity mindset says you know you're just gonna fight and yeah i think that is such a dangerous one it's one that's taught you know when you're a kid a lot right especially if you grew up poor you have this scarcity mindset but also you see it in business today of like i had got this competitor and we're gonna compete and you're like what the who cares who you're competing against i mean know your competition but there's plenty of people who need haircuts there's plenty of people who wanna buy coolers you know if you're like i need snacks there's lots of people who need snacks there's a lots of people who are gonna buy snacks and so part of it's like if they're not buying your snacks it's because like they aren't good enough right it's it's there's plenty of people rubbing your own oh shut up your snacks work your snacks were delicious i am so i think that you know it probably my conversations might vary with different founders based on kind of what they're bringing you know i'm not gonna have the scarcity abundance conversation with like the narcissist founder mh you know like that's not gonna that's not gonna be successful but i can tell you that i've had that i've had the scarcity of abundance conversation with probably twelve women and every one of them has changed their business their balance grow like their cash balance literally grow and i think it is just a mindset it's like this fear based mindset into a comfort like i am good at this this will be successful so maybe probing a little bit about their background even though you know maybe to just kind of understand a little bit more about maybe what they came from as much as they're willing to share since yeah i know a lot of time i did do you start the business what do to start to start the business i mean sometimes like i started i started a business because i needed to control my own schedule yeah i wanted to have kids and i wanted to be available to my kids and i was so tired of working for men who had stay at home wives that didn't understand that i had to get my kids from daycare care and i was like i and and after a series of jobs where i just wasn't getting that kind of flexibility i i wasn't able to earn it i was like oh i gotta just do my own thing so my origin story is not because i have this idea or know i was unavoidable it was literally because i just wanted some more control over my schedule yeah different origin stories yeah i think some people feel like they have an idea they've been entrepreneurs their whole life you know they have this need to to create the next big thing i didn't have that need i just wanted to i love to work and i wanted to do it on my own terms yeah you wanted to yeah but i but that kind of goes into these like different types of founders you know these different categories of founders and some i can work with and some i really you know it's not gonna it's not gonna be a great fit can you go through some more of the founders i'm now really interested did in this and i think julie and i will have kind of a pullback to this on how it relates to different men or different styles of mentors actually in these buckets so so i i'm curious you you you kinda had the beginning one of the lady who grew up poor and and you mentioned narcissistic lady which i think probably for itself a little bit some people start the business because they wanna be the center of attention you know they want to they want to be the the best it's very hard for them to have a genuine relationship with an accountant mh because we're seeing the real flaws and there is no spin you know there is no spin so i think that's they're gonna go through accountants quickly they're not gonna keep a relationship for a long period of time they're waiting for somebody to tell them exactly what they wanna hear yeah yeah so this is what's hard is that we name these people based on like the name of the first person that we worked with that was like that person so i can't disclose the names but i'll try to describe the people it's like the we have one that's like the opposite of the midas touch so it's like everything they touch turns to shit and this person is the person who doesn't deal with things mh so they get a letter in the mail and they don't deal with it they don't deal with the with the nuances of business like you have to get registered for family medical leave in colorado and your employees in colorado have to get set up on this program and it's just administrative and it is annoying and they have no patients or tolerance for that but they're still in business because they are so let's say ether like they just are so charismatic like that they have such a good face of the company but behind the company is like problem after problem after problem after problem because they don't deal with things well and they willing to hire somebody to do it yeah but you can ask some cases like you can't hire these things like no one's gonna care about your business more than you so and your delusional if you think that's the case no one is gonna care about these like kind of details of your business more than you so making sure that these things get wrapped up and and like and like approaching these things with a bigger of perfection like we will be perfect in payroll we will be perfect in state registration we will these things that will and they're clearly you know these this type of founder cannot handle doesn't like it can't handle it and these are not good owners they're usually and they're usually like burning someone else's money to be honest another type is so that person needs somebody to mentor them in a way that they are going to slow you know maybe slow down and like just keep get their house in order make a list action action the mail action the mail i think it's probably underlying insecurity of like i'm really good at you know pilates i'm really good at this particular you know public speaking i'm real i'm really good at this one thing but i'm not gonna at this other thing i expect someone else to do this no one's gonna do it yeah with the same figure that like a owner would so another type i mean this is the person who just wants to be famous that's dope actually i did you know that's is we have the pie i i was just great thing i was just gonna be the op op the midas touch everything but wow i gotta get my hands on more julie's money burn it obviously how is the person who wants to be famous different from the narcissist i feel like the person who wants to be famous they're just in it for the wrong reasons you know i could guess because i think fa probably person famous is actually willing to be told things aren't good because they wanted it to be great so they can continue to be famous where the nurses is just does not want any like bad information or anything that like the the famous person like okay with having the shame of being like okay not going well let's make it better i can be more famous am i right this this the person yeah this is the person that sits on every panel they've probably written a book they're really out there they're talking about their business all the time the reality of their business is probably not good because they're not actually caring and intending to their business they are doing the parent days yeah they're pedal their own brand really out so that's hard for me because i feel like they're selling you know when they're on those panels they're talking about their business but knowing behind the scenes that they maybe lit five million dollars on fire and not that much to show you know and what you're talking to is people who are trying to bootstrap the business i mean this is what's hard is that i'm like that's that's a really hard message to hear right if you're trying to boot up because you don't know that she lit five million or he lit five million dollars on fire right that's not a part of the panel discussion we're not gonna share that to the group that you know you need so it must be hard sometimes you're like yeah like polls bullshit it's different different circumstances yeah totally are we the one circumstances right the narcissist blames the accountants for the business failing you know the nurse is just blaming other people for the failure of the business we kind of laugh like when you get off a call with a client and you're just so confused it's probably a nurses like somebody who just you feel terrible about yourself and you're like feels terrible and also like i wanna keep working with them but i kind of don't but i feel like i should but i don't really wanna you know the energy vampire is kinda the yeah they don't necessarily wanna be famous they just want someone else to blame you know or like participate and then blame i kinda of put the the famous one as like the typical boss lady right the famous person is the the boss lady like who probably has like the perfect hair you know pair yeah yeah and a book to sell you yeah i think there are some founders that really put the data before the business they're they're so hiding behind the numbers you know we're gonna want to inventory toilet paper you know or like they they they're just they don't know what to do with the business so they're just gonna like continue to pile in on the numbers and to just become kind of obsessed with the numbers where at some point you have to say okay i now i i know the information i need from the numbers i need to go take that information inform the business to behave in a way that improves the numbers right and instead of kind of taking the information and action the information they're just like getting stuck in the numbers and then they come back to us they wanna have another call like i see this fourteen dollar charge was put in office supplies and it is advertising marketing and you're like we're talking about fourteen dollars you know you lost two hundred and seventy thousand dollars last month and you just wanna move fourteen dollars from one bucket to another like you have bigger problems but they're they don't know how to solve the bigger problems so they're just they would just wanna talk about the fourteen dollars mh but i you know and usually the business owners that are the most successful from a financial you know like a like a day to day financial perspective are the ones that are kind of you know taking a number they're informed by the numbers they're action the business their house is in order their house is tidy there's not an area that they don't understand they've taken full responsibility for understanding their financials and they appreciate the help but they they get it they know exactly how to read a balance sheet and they've really asked a lot of questions to make sure that they know how to read a balance sheet and then they're using that information to kind of you know they're taking it absorbing it and then moving on right they're they're going back to the business and back to work and then they're kind of checking it like test results and then going back to back to work so mh those people you probably wouldn't necessarily suspect that they're so good at what they do because they do it so quietly i'd like you're talking about yourself oh that's very sweet yeah i i i think it's it's been very fun you know we worked with hero cosmetics they did the pimple patch know we worked with these these women they were amazing they had an idea they got the technology there they grew it i mean they just sold for six hundred and thirty million dollars like they amazing and you're like but they were they did they weren't this exact version of a founder that was just in that you were like they're gonna win you knew it when they had you know a hundred thousand dollars in sales you knew it that they were gonna win they just had such such an understanding of what their role was in driving the business also the sewer the sewer guy was really good i mean some similar pimple patch sewer i mean clearly blemishes are helpful bad things yeah are there different people so you mentioned five the the person you grew up poor the narcissist opposite of the midas touch person wants to be famous and data before biz person okay what are kind of the tight circles because i i i know that the founders reference like you know bob said this and bob is x relationship to founder and sarah said that and sarah's why relationship to founder her what are the people you know normally hear i wanna call them like hangers on but like who are the key people that provide guidance to the founders and have you been able to see a difference between the people who provide guidance to the successful ones who understand take responsibility absorb and get back to work compared to you know the the five other buckets clients will used strategic advisors right they'll give a few points of equity to a strategic adviser somebody who they feel like is really valuable to them at the beginning of their company and they'll give a few points of equity to a strategic adviser and i wish so many times i could go back in time and tell clients not to do this because the person who's helping them at the beginning of their company will not be the person who can help them in the middle of the company or in in different growth stages and so i think it's this offer this feeling of like i need to be generous especially women do this they give away their equity to strategic advisors when their businesses are small and getting started and i think it's because they so so appreciate it and i've even had women that are like want me to come on and do this and i'm like stop you know please don't give your please don't give your equity away to anyone it's your business and if you need to pay for them pay for them but don't give your equity away and then as they as the businesses go because the person it's like getting married so early and you don't even know where this is going yet and who who you might need later so i think so i i know i didn't answer your question but i think that there is this appeal to like a strategic adviser i would say have those advisers you know lean on them hey like most of these people though are willing to do it because they love you and they want you to be successful and if they're not willing to do it for mean i don't i wanna say that strategic advisers aren't valuable just pay them just pay them borrow pay them you'll pay back borrow money can pay them yeah and keep your equity yeah okay so i would say that if you fast forward when i'm working with them when they're kind in a in more of a growth stage right the clients that have a cfo that they know interest are usually more successful those the description of the people they rarely have cfo and if they do they burn through them quickly right they don't create like a real relationship and i think a fractional cfo is the best thing to happen to high growth businesses and you know the that like that like middle phase like we are we've proven a concept we've proven that we can sell something now how do we grow it how do we just take the let out and grow it and i think that that's where a cfo is really really critical i would say shop around for your cfo interview them make sure you like them different cfo for different phases of your business just like just like a lawyer there might be if you wanna buy another company that's a different cfo than somebody who you want to help manage day to day operations change management you're going through bankruptcy get a cfo to help you through the bankruptcy like there are cfo that specialize in that jimmy has experience in consumer products he's a great product no he's great he's fantastic at it because he's been also he's been in the trenches and it's so comforting for owners to work with cfo who have who have seen and felt some of the pains that they have they feel very validated but i think that that is a good indicator to me that you understand how valuable the information is so much that you're willing to hire someone to help you understand it even more and to help you it even more the cfo is helping the action piece right we're documenting history and accounting we're writing down things that already happened and we're putting them in a way that hopefully is helpful again like results tells the story yes yeah this is this is kind of what happened in numbers the cfo is gonna help you look at that and then decide what to do about it so do we need to close down you know you'll find locations do we need to close this one down it's kind of a dog right i think that that's where i feel good about clients long term success when i feel like they have a cfo that they're listening to not all cfo are great i also wanna like press that some of the dumbest people i know are they call themselves cfo so it's like wow i it doesn't know you really you really do have to like vet them interview them work with them like you know there's not a professional designation anyone can just be like on a cfo there you know there's no like qualification so you really do have to do your own research of like why why are you a cfo what what led you hear do you you know did you go through school of hard knocks and become a cfo were you a cpa that that like you graduated or hated accounting and became a cfo what and so i think it's okay to like really dig into that but yeah i i do think that that's probably one of the difference it's it's a good indicator to me that this person is taking the information really seriously can i shift gears a little bit annie i have a question for you and it's something that i've been just having conversations with lots of different specifically female business owners around the idea of unwinding a business because i think there is this big you know the story okay so we can talk for days we could spend a week searching the internet for information about starting a business and we would not come up with the same resource twice there yeah there's not a lot of information about unwinding a business there's a lot of information about selling the business and the big spectacular press release with the you know the fireworks and everything and there's not a lot about what happens when a business is just ready to you know move on and how you you know obviously from a financial standpoint there is an element of that could be because there's financial you know issues or just that people are ready to like move on to something else do you have any like advice or any kind of like ways that you have conversations with people and or like that emotional connection that especially to jimmy point right this is this is literally your life and if you yeah stop doing this then like who are you so i'll throw that in there yeah i thoughts i think so often people keep business alive that should be closed down because of this fear of failure and this fear so they keep hustling you know i i almost think of my role in some way as a ministry of like i'm just gonna take the shovel away you just keep digging a bigger hole it's not working i'm just gonna keep showing you that it's like you know the hole is getting bigger can i have the shovel is it time is it over and that's a that's probably the hardest thing that i do is help them figure that out and when i say i i mean we i mean we this whole this whole time is that i have this amazing team at a crew and four partners yeah yes okay but i think that that's one of the things that we do is that we can just kind of help them find that it's over and do that again without shame with dignity so many businesses fail and what did you learn and how did you grow what's next go you know go take a vacation go enjoy but what's next there's also the business of closing a business which is like there's a lot of paperwork and a lot of things to do i kinda describe it as landing a plane it usually is a slow you don't just inside the leftover over like that's good we're done yes it's like a slow unwinding like it takes them little bit of time and so honestly that's even harder because like you still have to participate in like the closing of the of the dying business and you still have to like you know talk through the final bank statements and like wrap up everything and so that can sometimes take six months and it can be really painful but well i been somewhere between like the big sale and the actual like you know closing of it like i think it's you know kind of i think founder sometimes have this idea that the only thing they've ever seen is the big giant sale and are there ways to transition it to somebody else ways to yeah that is not always you know as much as i would like to say that and anytime you see somebody say like we've been acquired or like i mean you're also calling bullshit come on don't be delusional here sometimes you just got out of your debt you know and you're walking away with nothing and accept a ton of lessons to learn but again like don't be you know what you see is not what's happening you know and also i think that sometimes owners is like even when they have the opportunity to kind of get out of their business and and they get out with ten bucks in their pocket they don't feel good about that and i guess what the thing is like that is the that is that is how the majority of these things end they don't end like hero cosmetics yeah they end with a a lesson learned and yeah and like gets we people don't talk about that really low because again like it doesn't sell yeah i'm bring it back so the point that i really took away i've heard you say landing the plane but i never understood it as much as that well if you're at forty thousand feet as julie said you can't just stop the flight like it's not even like even if you eject you know you're still got some time before you hit the ground you know there there there is a period and most people don't wanna to eject and there are there well be other passengers that also would object to being ejected without a parachute so there's you know pieces to this where where do you see folks turn to for support these founders when they are at forty thousand feet and you keep telling them you know gas is running out you are not refill in the air you know like where do people go beyond you is there any kind of like insight you've seen where the successful ones who land a plane you know and feel good about it or going this way or thinking about it this way versus you know others that just you know just jump i think it's kind of a desert i don't think there's a ton of people that i i actually feel like the business of this is very low the business of unwinding a business is very lonely we know usually the people who they owe money to know the cfo of course is hopefully a good source of understanding and i i hope that they have a good personal network i and i think it's i i i do think that those personal networks are developing especially among female founders but just i think that we have to make sure that we can be vulnerable with those networks right and we used to do like performance groups when i i started my career in franchising and we would do performance groups who take five different franchisees and put them together make them share their financials make them share their goals with each other it was like and it led with financials it was a financial performance group but then it became so much more because it's like once you've seen all you know everyone's in each other naked we we don't have to wonder we can just kind of then move forward and i hope that there are plenty of female founder groups that could start with could lead with financials and i think that they would be so much more authentic and so so much more productive because it's the truth it's the truth of the business so no i don't think many of them have help on the way down i think if they find someone it's it's wonderful and it's a gift i don't know that i am always the best person to kind of be that person for them because it's so it's just so emotional it's and that sense of failure i mean i i i try my best to say like this you know we we we see this all the time it happens it's okay what you learn but the reality is they need someone to like drain a bottle of tequila and you know feel sorry for them and then say okay what's next right like everyone needs that person to grieve with them so i hope that maybe as we're developing these different female founders these women who are willing to be feminine and willing to be vulnerable and willing to be kind i hope that we can also be willing to share this like this truth right and to start with that and then i think that we'll be more successful if we can get there i actually women will get there faster than men because i i think men probably hide it even more than women so but i mean i think half of new businesses started last year where were women sounded so i think yeah like yes i think there's also a little bit of an of potentially an additional feeling as being a caretaker right you and you have the team and you're taking care of these people and that not only is it like your financials but then even if your financials are okay and you step away like you're letting them down and i think there's like yeah i just i think it's like a really interesting concept that i just see not being discussed at all and considering how many people and now especially if economy is changing how many people are starting businesses that may or may not make it that that's support and then like what are the what are a of the lessons learned but like are there resource are there assets from these businesses are there you know ways to kind of repurpose these businesses in different ways that are different than what this vision is that we have the you know shark tank story of how it all goes down yeah so maybe it's just changing the narrative a little bit so yeah i have a good friend a former client allison and moss she started tight a deodorant it was a great consumer product it was a a aluminum bit free natural deodorant and it it was a great party i had great growth in target you were okay yeah i mean loved her and then you know it was like the ending of that business was so ci substantial with covid and you know they got on the shelves at target but then covid happened and no one was shopping at target and no one was buying a eleven deodorant during that time anyway now one was even using deodorant at that time and then it just you know what and it was kind of a perfect storm and she sold the assets of the business and then got out and she handled it in a way that was just so beautiful and i admired so much and so i would not hesitate to introduce her to anyone going through that conversation because she really did handle it without shane and with just an understanding of like it didn't work and it wasn't for lack an effort and it wasn't for lack of like a good product you know and it's like we we could do an analysis of why businesses don't work but she did it she was just like it's done yeah and she un unwind it but also like how to sell the assets how to sell the brand how to sell the logo like is that possible is there someone who can buy it i mean i i think that that's just a yes i so maybe as this ecosystem grows a little bit we can start to connect those people that yeah i think there is a lot of opportunity to take that stigma away a failure yeah yeah a lot of these next chapter next chapter it's next chapter whatever next yeah chapter yeah and in some way i think you're they're like released from it mh you know this thing becomes kind of a beast and i i think that you're like it's okay to be free from it it's okay you can just let go of the balloon and find something else to do like you were to offer the world yeah love that katie i have one more question before my wrap up so you said that for founders groups it would be best for them to help each other if they could immediately share their books and basically lay naked the numbers of their business and that would more likely get them further faster together what if it wasn't a group focused on business but a group focused around some other objective or some other community what would be potentially a good way that could help that group feel more comfortable faster and really share you know richer content with each other without the kind of like you know formality and like dancing around topics like is there a version of financials for interpersonal relationships that you like that you could just well like i don't know if it it's like it's like yeah you tell my current from your tax return you know like no no no i actually don't think it's money it's what the financials represent which is the the the real story it's like how can you meet people and get past the social media piece as quickly as possible to like what's what's hard what's what's real you and and you you think it's getting to what's hard that's such a negative view of life i think what's real what's and okay so maybe it's like just meeting people where they are a little bit better of like i know that you're working but you have two little kids at home so how difficult is your day oh my goodness i i just know it i know how busy you are can we start there with like it's not great i mean moments are great but i know i mean that is if i think about the journey of my life two little kids at home is the hardest version of that life so and you'd decide to do that twice i did i did yeah the second time listen the second time i had a yan so i'm not gonna like the first brilliant take care yeah the second yes yeah i think just making sure that you don't buy the hype ever even with like teenagers i mean julie you know this like just because they're like amped up with their friends and then have you ever seen it and the friends go home and they shut the door and they're like this horrible thing happened and b you know and their whole demeanor changes because you're the you're the mom like you're the safe place for them to have that total breakdown i think it's like don't ever don't ever buy the hype that you know just that first impression of someone i don't always believe that's so i just had a conversation with somebody we were just talking about that members of chief and like were just saying how it's so hard because so many of those conversations are like so not here they're so high up here and then yeah yeah yeah great but you can get to the real struggle yeah and like i still love you and i still yeah think that you're great and i still think that you're gonna do well but it's okay if you had bad day like yeah they're not all great or bad or a bad one like it's so it's okay they're not all great and also like when then you can also celebrate really authentic wins because i i feel like there's media wins yeah but like some of this is a little doom and gloom on this like the last hour and so i feel a little bad about that like i'm just talking about like you know horror stories but when when we all have a good understanding of where you came from and then we see the wins and we see the sales grow and we see the margin and get better and we see the the real wins that enthusiasm between the client and us and like the the cfo i mean i know jimmy that you you know this that that enthusiasm is so genuine because we never saw the hype we never believed the hype to begin with so like it's like we're we're like in the inner circle of like yes is working yes yes that promotion did work or like that product is doing really well that is great like it's real even though on social media it's like every product is great all the time of course in like three reality of course it's not so i think maybe that's where if if you could create safe spaces where if you meet people in the tough times like you can really celebrate when they're doing well like and and like you you have a a more authentic barometer of a person i i think okay so to go back to mentoring like how to be a better mentor or how to be a better mentality it's like how quickly can we get through the hype yeah to the real yeah and then i can authentically celebrate with you or i can authentically grieve with you on what's working and what's not working rather than you know again i'm i'm showing i'm selling a version of cell i you need the mentor relationship has to be like from a very vulnerable place yeah also there's no point k it's just just place third person yeah posted on his instagram yeah yeah exactly and so it's nice it's nice to be seen i think maybe that's when that's when too like you have like mentors that tell you things that are so impactful it's because they just got right to the heart of it as quickly as possible yeah definitely find the real story yeah what's the truth i have a very quick rapid fire award association i'm just gonna throw a couple words at you really okay whoever it comes to mind okay when i say mentor dad my dad dad yeah when i say men you say my kids who sponsor a coach i can think we're hear that soccer there you go love it thank you so much annie i love this conversation so much jimmy julie this was such a meaningful conversation i got so much out of it i love annie i'd met her before but just hearing her go through all of what she's seen and like help people feel okay about where they are with their finances oh my god it like if this this episode changed me i have to say meaning you felt very comfortable because we were talking about money without using numbers you know just in involved like infographic icons graphic knowledge accountant you know ben a not to be seen yeah especially as a business owner like it's really important to know that there are ups and there downs and there's backs and there's forests and there's all different kinds of peoples and purse people and personalities and just to her calm approach to all of the different ways that these businesses come together just was really meaningful i agree i'm not trying to give you a hard time because i think if the founders can understand that it is just hard now you might be crazy for doing it but it's hard no matter what so just trying just being in the arena is an an avenue for you to help reduce your feelings or shame reduce your feelings of embarrassment if you started your business and immediately were printing money something's going on it would be it's you're dealing drugs yeah or money laundering yeah you're not pressing shirts you're just laundering the even here like the stories of microsoft like microsoft made like twelve thousand dollars in their first year it it always is hard and when you can feel comfortable enough to truly show the numbers which is you know that's it's the that's the dirt behind you know it's under your nails you know that's where you really gotta get to if you wanna change things and honestly change your mindset it's huge huge it's huge and i think we talk a lot about what's in like the entrepreneurial sort of you know vernacular and the hype and the grind you know it's like you hear so many great stories about all these things going well and it's so hard to be honest about what is not going well and i think annie really brought a lot of just like yeah level headed to this whole conversation and and to your point like it's just hard but i loved her different versions of looking at different founders because we've been talking quite a lot about why people start businesses you know like what what their purpose is and her seen so many different business owners and so many different entrepreneurs we're talking specifically about female entrepreneurs but these kind of different archetypes was fascinating the fractured five the fracture five it was such a line from annie who i don't think said it with any kind of you know a she just was like these are people that i wanna be able to help them help themselves and if anybody can do it it be annie and her team and i it's probably true that for some people to really get to that level of vulnerability they have to be able to show you the numbers and i bet more than we would expect if people maybe not in the first meeting but the second or third mentoring meeting was just like yeah like this is my net worth this is how much money i make and what i spend and like it's uncomfortable to say this i bet if both individuals did that at some mentoring gatherings they would be shocked at how tight they would get and how they would be able to truly help each other when you got past some of the the veil of call it bs smoke in the mirrors small smoke in the mirrors and i loved how also to your point she wasn't kinda giving us these archetypes to be judgmental or anything it was just more like what do these people need to hear what do they want to hear why are they doing this business why aren't they you know taking a job and and you know working full time for somebody else they have a motivation behind starting the business and to understand that helps you understand where they're coming from and what they really need which is so like kind and reflective as well on her part instead of just like one size fits all like everybody has to you know be doing this for this reason or that reason it's like this is the kind of founder you are this is a kind of business you you would probably be rolling with so beyond wanting annie is your mentor i think i think my takeaway and i i'm blessed to be able to have annie in my life in many ways i've been blessed with annie it's so critical to realize that if you're being held back in a relationship especially around mentoring if there's nothing that can be taken from you and you can operate from an abundance mindset it might be time to share your numbers it might be time to really you know let go of any kind of secrecy and say you know this is where i'm at and it feels really raw but i'm gonna tell you and i am still gonna ask for help or advice or listen you i think will be surprised at how une uncovering and lightning the conversation will become yes so that is our homework assignment for everybody who is working on a business and working with the mentor is have the money con lay it all out on the line cash money taken over for the nine nine the two thousand and if you are printing money then write us and let us know we'd be curious to know how you're doing it yes yeah come mentor us ag is app wow you've made it this far and we thank you hopefully you enjoyed our episode and discovered new ways to bring more authentic connection into your mentoring relationships wanna tell him more jimmy be an au with us visit our website for the best interactive mentoring content at au mentors dot us share our podcast with someone you care about like and subscribe and yes really you following our show and writing a review it's a big deal your actions provide us with the resources to continue our undefeated une uncovered prize winning productions we welcome questions and suggestions via email high at au dot us or on social with our handle at au hq we are most active and available on linkedin and youtube shout out in earnest thank you to our intrepid producer e cad we appreciate you augmented out see you

hey we're we build through mentoring i'm julie and i'm jimmy today we are joined by davidson hay executive life coach sales consultant linked in mastermind an advocate for important issues such as orphan rights and redefining masculinity davidson tells us about trends he is seeing within people in the workplace is the younger generation more connected they more interested in passion projects is vulnerability out pool should you have a side project or a job maybe we should all just accept grace and get on with the show here we go wow davidson hang we are so excited to have you on adventures today i've been really looking forward to this conversation based on your background and leadership development and entrepreneurship and it seems you have a lot of the same passions that jimmy and i do which is helping people connect more authentically with others and grow to their potential one thing we'd love to talk to our guest about is their first mentor because usually a mentor is somebody who believes in you before you believe in yourself so who was that for you and what did they see so mike ro he was also a manager of mine and he would always yeah mike's a good guy he would always say something that like somewhat triggering but really planted that seed he would say like if i had an ounce of your talent what i would do with that i wouldn't i surely wouldn't waste it it was like just enough i'm like what does he mean by that like what is he seeing something that i'm not seeing but it it always stuck with me and and to your point it was the first person that's one someone really saw something in me that i i i i didn't see myself so like where was that how old are you it was at tri net it was during when i think i started to find my confidence like i mean it it wasn't just one interaction right like every week he we just plant like something else so he'd just be like he's like man do you realize like when people are with you like it's just different he's like you have something special like he's like you could be at the michael jordan of our industry if you wanted to be so it was just like little things but it was just like every week i was like he would just plan and be like what did like what is he it was like in some ways it's like very triggering for me because i'm like no one has ever said this to or like why does he keep saying this like he can't be making it up if it's every week right so that that really was confronting but it but it really truly did plant that seat with my car like maybe he's on something well and how did that change how you acted like how did that change your trajectory and where did that lead you from there yeah yeah i think he it was the first time where i really had to like look at myself and i'm like is this guy like the biggest content in the world or like am i like am i just going crazy like what like why does he keep saying this you know but it it just really made me be more intros and just think and and he would just deliver like the most timely messages right when i was feeling down or or and every time and he it would just he would motivate me to just be the first one in the office and the last one to leave and just just to almost like over analyze like everything but but in a healthy way i would say because it he just made me see that there was just a higher standard of excellence that certain people had but that i didn't see myself but he's he he always planted that seat like hey like you're you're capable more like come on like this is eighty percent there like let let's see what it would look like if you tried a hundred percent you know so how did that like what was that first conversation like were you sitting down like i'm like was he your manager were you at lunch like what what led up to that first moment yeah yeah it i it was just it's very subtle right he would let me lead meetings and he would always be like okay and like let's share like let's plan out what like what what we you wanna say because you have this huge opportunity to like speak in front of like the whole company right so it it would just be a lot of preparation and he was a unconditional manager like instead of doing like the weekly one on ones for an hour like he didn't do he didn't schedule any of that it was just whenever i would just go up to him and just to share with him like hey this is what i'm working on so it in in some ways it was it was weird because sometimes like i would call them at eight o'clock at night or you know we had conversations at seven in the morning right but it felt like a safe space where i could talk about anything like beyond work but it was just like all the little operation moments and then just being able to see me fully and acknowledge me like in front of the room in such a and and it was it was great because i think he was the best with the carrot and the sticks where he knew exactly what we all wanted and he would you know sometimes he would dang that carrot right it's like hey like you know i know you're gonna get you're gonna propose to your wife soon so you know this doing this will help you get there a lot more quickly right so talk about carrots you know tuesday say tuesday say alright i like and man that's a hell of a alignment that when if if i had an ounce of your talent i wouldn't waste it mean that that is all put together carrot stick so both subtle and you know very very loud yeah exactly has how to sort of translate into the work that you're doing now i mean if you hear this and you're a young professional you're probably you know quite unsure of ourselves as a lot of bizarre when we first enter the workforce and you look at all these people who seem like they know exactly what they're doing and they have exactly the right clothes and they're saying exactly right things of meetings and you know how did you take that belief that mike had in you and change the way you operated and the way you acted to take you on the path that you are on today yes a good question yeah i i'll be vulnerable for a minute i would i would say like a lot of people of color like i i often viewed as like the the white male executives as like the enemy right if someone has that has often being the only person that looks like me on the sales team right and all the pre all the assumptions they make about like asian men right i mean now i think there's definitely more representation but including facing roles i would i would attend like celebration dinners and then my worker coworkers joking we just ask you know whether it's the owner of the of the winery or whatever like hey like what do you think davidson role is in this like sub it's like oh buy the it guy or that calendar or something like that and then like no he's the sales rep that close this really big deal but long story short i think mike really challenged that that my assumptions which is like hey like white men just wanna support other white men right but we had a pretty diverse team and and he was very honest he'd be like hey like no i want like people like yourself to get into leadership right because everyone looks like me and and just him saying that just gave me the like like oh maybe my and at the time i was twenty so that was seven years ago so i was like twenty nine years old you know still like further on my career but still like you said i think in your twenties you're still trying to find yourself right they really like disrupted everything i knew to be true which is like hey like us minorities us people that are less privilege like we have to stick together and and they're the enemy and i think him saying that helped me just reflect on know actually i've had a lot of like white men mentors that have really made a difference you took a chance on me and that completely changed the paradigm of what i knew to be true and the challenge like all of my beliefs that i i i was so i was holding on to so dearly that is super interesting in some of the work that we've been doing recently we've had a lot of conversations about with our clients around diverse mentoring and you know the idea that it's always like you know the asian man mentoring an asian man it's always a black woman mentoring and a black woman and where is that opportunity to make sure that you have a diverse group of mentors and that sometimes the best mentor is absolutely the white guy who's in charge because he you know he can provide a really different perspective and it sounds like mike also was really able to and what we passionately referred to as you know open the door past the mic and that he really saw that that way sorry about being mike so but that he was able to really pass on his power which is a big deal and not not always the case so sounds like it was both you were ready for it and he was ready and he was the kind of person who was really open to it as well so that's really cool to hear okay so what happened next and yes so so i had the privilege of working with him again at fortune magazine so we we were guinea pigs and and creating like a huge mentorship program for the the next generation of fortune five hundred c suite so we were able to build that and i was able mike and i were able to build fortune magazines like in the one hundred years of existence first mentorship program at fortune so there there was just so real yeah so many opportunities but i think the in him saying that i i noticed i i wouldn't steal those statements things i would say variations of what he said to me with all of my t's and i i've been fortunate enough maybe because i write a lot of on rite aid and a lot of thought leadership but i've i've had the privilege of mentoring at this point probably over a hundred people and a lot of them did also come from like broken families didn't have a father people that grew up you know living up with government assistance for some reason a lot of like foster kids or or foster people reach out to me i guess because back in the day there were a lot of anglo saxon like parents at like adopted like korean children so now i don't know what is i guess because i'm pretty vulnerable about some of my insecurities like i i've been able to mentor a lot of people but but at big mike was first person that really helped me see the power of membership and and the power of just like really believing in someone despite my image of myself was as a broken loser who was like not capable of like tying his shoes right like he really did plant that see then i was like like what else is possible like getting the same gift to to other people that have been kind enough to reach out to me because they saw something in may for whatever reason yeah i'm curious can you talk a little bit more about where you found your kind of a power and ability to look inwards i mean mean you're pretty i mean you already use the term vulnerable twice on this podcast which is something that a lot of people are hesitant to do and i know in your writing in your website you mentioned quite a bit about you know hey this is me or this was me and this is how i've changed and when did you first realize there was power in that intros intersection i think it's reddit actually i i would post on reddit pretty pretty vulnerable about like i had that answer before david and i love it really you definitely are the first person who said that i don't i don't i don't read it's like reddit it's a controversial in place but i i would write like very vulnerable about like this is all of my insecurity these are like the hundred ways i failed and all these things and some of those post go viral right and then i had so many people reaching out to me that we're domestically abused or like just people that had a lot of identity issues you know being asian asian american a lot of us struggle with like the eastern philosophy that what we grew up in and our parents and the collective thinking more about the collective in family and less about the individual but obviously being in america right where we have to celebrate individuality so that's what i think help me see because every time i would post and then on linkedin especially actually when i work at linkedin i would just be i would cry like in front of like i i think at the time fifteen thousand or were sixteen thousand followers on linkedin and like just crying just like hey like i really failed like i bombed this interview and all this stuff and i would just have like very very successful people sometimes executives like in the c suite that like would message me be like wow like kudos to you man like you're helping me think about my imp syndrome and like when i'm being really hard on myself i'm not giving myself the same grace i'm giving my employees or my teammates or and and i think that is what really helped me see like whoa okay like i think i'm onto to something and i'd love to know and you're working with men ts because i do think there is an opportunity as a mentor and you're working with men mentor and you know that there is a deeper level what's going on and what they're telling you right they're telling you the surface level of the what and the why or they're telling you the story about the people but you know that there's something else going on and you know are there are kind of questions that you have in your back pocket or phrases that you use to help create the space for them to feel more comfortable being vulnerable yeah i i think it would be just sharing about whether it's like some of the challenges of marriage or just like some of the ends insecurities of being an entrepreneur or just some of the what it feels like very critical feedback that i'm receiving from like literally random strangers right as i'm doing more podcast podcasts as i'm doing my newsletter and my youtube channel and things like that and so usually i'll i'll open up about like a failure that that i'm currently going through and i think that would create the space but i think i'm like very non threatening person i i do feel like people in general like tend to open up but i i do think i'm like hyper sensitive so i think it's hard for me like not to get attached to what my men are going through but you know i do think it does take time right especially if like they have been abused or they you know and some of my men cases like they're ex girlfriend is just committed to suicide like there's just like a lot of heavy things that are going on usually but yeah i feel very blessed that i i do i do try to create like a safe space so people tend to be pretty pretty open with me and is that something you tried to bring to you know at linkedin i mean you mentioned being there a little bit but i know that you know you are there creating one of their employee research groups from the beginning yep yeah when you're working within a larger organization like that it's not just you know like davidson being here for you but you're representing a larger group like how did you kind balance the hey you know we are trying to i don't i want i want you to talk about it as well the linkedin asian alliance but what what would how how would you balance representing an organization yet also very much being yourself and welcoming people to this community you are building within the organization man that's a that's a tricky question i mean in some ways that's why i it's it's friday morning you had you had some coffee you know we're we're getting into it he's in california no no i i take it back yeah we we can we can change that no that's fine i mean i mean that is one of the reason why i decided to go to entrepreneurship because i did notice like there are a lot of nuances that come with like the corporate and then we would have events with google and and salesforce and amazon's e right so it was always like there's so many as as you both know well like there's just a lot of layers to it so in the beginning i was i had a i have a buy well in general i have a bias towards action so when stop asian hate happened and there were like the the murders and atlanta like i would just be so quick like let's have like a session where we can just everyone just say what they need to say and then of course like the heads of the d and i stuff slap my hand and be like hey like this needs to be like a a a joint effort like we can't just you can't just like send out an email to like the you know like the hundreds of members you have and just stuck so in in some ways there were a lot of leader asian leaders that were like davidson like that's leadership like took you had to courage to take action and then on the other hand they're like no like there you know there's a process like there's frameworks like you you can't just be doing you know so it it honestly that was probably some of the most confronting times of of of my life like just hosting all these panel events but it's also like i i think the most memorable moments of my life so far right like to create these safe spaces and have these like executives to share openly and and it you know so like with one b hap happened it was probably some of the most meaningful moments of my life but it was also like just so confronting just being with my friends and having the space and having creating spaces where they were able to process this right so i don't know if that answered your question but i i think it's it's so nuanced to talk to me at to give like a straight answer there yeah i mean i i guess what i kinda heard was you had a way that you wanted to support the people who you cared about and that didn't always fit within a large organization and that's kinda what led you to what you're doing now yeah great there's might be a great way of saying can you tell us like exactly we just jump right into it with with who your previous mentor was but you can tell us like what you're doing now and i mean it's a couple things yeah it's something that i'm battling with because like this so there's a huge part of me that like i've i've grown this society of agents and sales and customer success community to over a thousand very so a lot of these events would be like interviewing like asian cro or asian executives to just share a little bit of what i call like breaking through the bamboo ceiling so that's been super rewarding now you know now i'm miller call i heard what you did there david and literally i heard what you nope not glass families like no yeah yeah and that's been super rewarding and it but there's it's very confronting right because like if if i'm around that all the time like i need to recharge and in part of me like i'm like i like the differences or am i just creating a safe right it's a part of me just like oh like is this moving me away from you know really causing like causing like related ness across and you know so i don't know it it's hard because i i do it's like i have this push and pull where part of me it's like oh i love this stuff but part me it's like it's hard to be with this like day all the time you know so it it's tough so so the latest thing i'm doing is called the i i called like the one hundred one hundred million lives movement but i've gone up to the last six months i've gone up to six hundred random strangers and they're just started to ask him them like deep questions about their lives so that's been super interesting to say the least what what's your go to question oh do you have any regrets and jimmy do you have any regrets i wish i had glasses as loud as you it's true yeah i think would a state championship and basketball there you go yeah you must get wild answers to trying to think what might be what's the answer that most shocked you and not in like a incredibly sad and depressing way i it's the second part is what i'm trying to go for a lot of times so that that is like i i i regret stopping on the sidewalk what why am i talking to you this is too much i need to get coffee you know what's like the the one that really threw me off like the most mh and it was so grounding there was a lady who like was like flying in from germany because i do it in bryant park a lot so there's a lot of tourists that and that there and i and i remember asking like what's your happiest moment and she's like right here like right now like in this moment like this is the happiest i've been and i'm like i don't know why but that just like blew my mind and i'm not i'd like i almost like dropped the mic i was wait what i don't know but that just stuck with you almost literally dropped the yeah so what is your biggest regret v did i ask the same question yeah no oh okay okay this is my adhd kicking in so the question that i love the most i always at because i'm thirty six years old i always ask what would what advice would you give to your thirty six year old self like if they're older in thirty six and then they're mh if they're younger the you're twenty one year old self and i always get the best answers when i when i ask that question i feel like i can answer that the greatest regret is a tough one but my thirty six year old self i have very good advice for her and that would be get it in writing hello oh that is a good one honestly ashley especially yeah yeah get it in writing that's a good one so all you thirty six year old olds out there get it and ready which could be also tied to my biggest regret sorry yes i it's okay yep if i didn't have all the contact davidson i wonder if you're thinking miss i would just be thinking of sounds like a bad divorce not the case oh so jimmy to answer your question that actually was the the biggest regret like the most memorable like any regrets staying in a marriage for far too long was often the biggest regret for for a lot of women middle aged women that that i asked that question i was like and you can feel right you can generally feel that that was like yeah i get that yeah so what are you doing with all these interviews is it just for your own interest or like where i mean i have to tell us me where it going it's like a lot of good content yeah a lot of a lot of content i'm i'm learning how to edit a little bit better it as creators you both creative as you both know it's like there's a fine balance between you know getting content that gets a lot of likes and stuff like that and actually like genuine con like long form content that is meaningful so i'm just trying to strike a balance between like hey like i want people to listen this right but i don't wanna sell out as well so it's all over social media i would say at this point yeah how would you tease out the difference between sell out and chill out show out shi no shi like like selling on behalf of another that's good because yeah well because it's i'm curious you're with with a lot of your sales roles you know you were selling on behalf of these other organizations and now when it's flipped and it's you talking to other people you now take almost getting in a way like this gift like this advice so it's like how do you how do you like still like represent that advice well versus is like just trying to do something sensational yeah subject books that's tricky i mean i i think in some ways like i'm too unfiltered according to my wife so i i i think i i i it's her opinion yeah yeah yeah she's she's definitely more introverted more reserved whereas like i've been told on the most extroverted person they've ever met in their entire life like i've gotten that multiple times i mean i do like i do post a lot of like raw unfiltered content like just straight i mean those typically don't do as well right in terms of like you know viral it's tough i i get it as well right it's like i'm sure i mean you're you're both it sounds like pretty good at knowing like what podcast episodes do well and which one's done and which clips which sound bites do well i i think it's like a delicate bounce you have to do both right because because at the end of the day like you can have the world's best content but if no one's listening to or watching it then it doesn't really matter as much it feels like yeah but it does seem like hearing real people's reactions to different questions and people you know kind of really vulnerable sharing i think that is really i think that is really interesting and actually it makes me think like what trends are you seeing in people like if you've asked six other people some of these really deep questions like if you could you know do an ai like yeah you know map or like what is what is going on with people that's a good one it feels like the consciousness is i do think the younger generation seems to be much more connected like more globe globalization is clear that like we're all it it feels like people are finally grappling doing what they want to be doing more like there's a lot of people pursuing passion projects that in the past they they wouldn't have because it wasn't practical and if people are traveling a lot again too it feels like it seems like right if i was to say the biggest trends i would say like vulnerability is cool would say like people care about the climate is note i noticed that's like another comment when people keep talking about there's like it seems like everyone has like a side project like a side passion so that's really cool to hear about like people lining up when they talk about that and because i'm asking the advice to thirty six year old self one lot or twenty one year old self as lot it's it's to just have grace with with yourself right like like be kind with with one oneself that's another common thing as well so there there's like acceptance as the what i looking for is a very very common theme so especially with the folks that are much older but you'd be surprised there's some twenty like four year olds that are like dropping wisdom and i'm like man like how you this wise is at this age like that's amazing i think it's all the tiktok they watch it it brings it around it is there anything that you felt like is missing from these six hundred you come i'm having trouble to getting to because i do it in new york city a lot right like the very like successful people that are like running around trying to make that next million like i'm having trouble getting them to stop and like actually like let's let's have a conversation like they're just like hey you wanna ask me about making money i got you but some of these deeper questions like i'm not ready for that so that i don't know if there's something i could do better to disarm them but that that's one area or one group that i'm struggling with like having like longer deeper engagements with yeah yeah gotcha if we can go back to other themes than and what you've teased out i obviously you're pretty good at you say you have adhd but you're fairly consistent at showing up if you've had six hundred conversations and i have read that you had fifty job interviews at one point between one job to another yeah i'm not even sure what to say that is such you know just discipline and continuing to get through that that must have been very challenging what would be your takeaway like not vice davidson but what would be your advice to the people that were interviewing you on all those jobs like what was one question that nobody asked that like made clear that half the people you know just did not care yeah i mean clearly there's a lot of like ken questions that people ask right like usually like the same like six to seven questions but i feel like not a lot of people like actually truly asked me like what's the one thing like i would wanna spend my ten thousand hours on the most right like very few maybe one to two percent of people ask that i think that's like a great question to ask anyone right because it truly gets to the essence the core of one's being i wish more people would be curious about that wait repeat the question what it was ten thousand hours saying again yeah what's what's your one thing that you would have no trouble spending ten thousand hour on wow okay we'll go around jimmy yeah so you you you're basically saying what would malcolm glad will call me an expert in what do i wanna be and i didn't know that justin bieber has a song called ten thousand hours as well fun fact you know i don't know if there's any single thing i'd like to spend ten thousand hours on that i haven't already spent it on i would want to be inter about it so it's not like being a mentor it is what we're doing with au augmented it is understanding better how to set up structures and incentives and communities that support mentoring okay that's gonna take a whole lot you know different things together as opposed to my father who has made it very clear that he's not gonna die till he gets ten thousand hours with the stand up base like okay go get him i mean it's definitely he's got time let's good on yeah yeah what about you davidson if it's one word i would say male well i guess it's two words it's male vulnerability mh it's really something that i think there's a huge opportunity either there for men corporate more specifically yeah definitely it's actually very cool to see some really awesome content channels tackling that right now and that conversation to be elevated yeah it's really cool makes me hopeful for my college age daughters i know at ten thousand i mean i definitely spend ten thousand hours drinking coffee i don't know how long it takes drink coffee and i don't know i'm not very regular at math like how many but at least if i have coffee for thirty minutes a day every day for rest of my that would be it but just connecting connecting with with people i think having conversations where you feel like you are heard and you are hearing somebody that is and whether that's you know mh on the at the three corner saying hello to somebody or if that's in a deep conversation like we're having now or you know work wise or personal i think just connecting with people i'm also quite an extra davidson and so i get that yeah but i also need the to recharge time but i think yeah connecting i hope that i can always do that for davis i'm curious like you're the way you frame the question is jumping out at me which is what's one thing you wanna spend ten thousand hours on as opposed to what's one thing you want to live for mh you know but the second one to me maybe i'm just the engineer so you know the nerd me like ten thousand that's a number you know who you know and that and that's less like you know touchy feely than like davidson what what are you here to live for what what's gonna be a reason to you know get up every morning in this role i mean obviously i mean the the interviewer may wanna be asking you like you know to get a little context about you but in the end the interview you not there and like creating friend they're trying to understand how you're gonna try value for our organization yeah so are you asking me if your questions is i'm not you up the hook yet come on i so i've asked your your question a lot during these random stranger interviews yeah and sometimes i think people give i hate to say generic right but i like you would say like they're being apparent is probably the most common and and then it's very cool to see how people love their kids like parenting and just i haven't had the privilege yet but it just from i would say four hundred out of the six hundred people have said some variation of that right like just being a parent just been like the best memory ever so i don't know if it's in the way that i'm asking it i i keep getting the same answers but i think the first one would give me a little bit more variety that's yeah because there i'm gonna forget the specific piece but there something julian and i working on where the the two questions most correlated to happiness where can you answer at least one thing for what is something to live for and what is something to die for and if you don't have an answer for both of those you will very clearly have significantly you know less correlated you know scores is on happiness it's good one i love that i'm gonna have to ask that well and actually these are all questions i think that kind of lead to the you know in mentoring conversations obviously a corporate mentoring conversation where your men just shows up from the intern program you might now wanna they wanna live for wanna die for off the bat but it depends upon where you work yeah true maybe google i don't know but i think having in these kind of deep questions to really get to know somebody i feel like we often are not having the time to listen and to ask good questions and to create the pause that is in the middle so that somebody can really contemplate kind of what you're asking and be able to really share probably there's an element of like you come you know the thing that either jumps in your head first or the thing that you're you know not embarrassed to talk about but i think creating some of that space really allows for that so let me ask you that it's a little bit changing gears but as you have become an entrepreneur one of the reasons why jimmy and i actually started this podcast is because we have both only been business owners for the vast majority of our career and had take doing for so much more my my much longer career than much older but we have had to find mentors right because we didn't get corporate handing us down somebody or you know we don't have anybody necessarily looking out for us so we have had to knock on doors and break cold emails and say hey you know i see you're doing this like can we get to know you like what are you doing so how have you found mentors to help you on your journey yeah yeah so growing up off of government assistance growing up without of a father essentially right i i was very proactive so when i discovered linkedin i was like whoa you mean i can reach out to like anyone and i would listen to i think at the time maybe a couple hundred different podcast episodes of like six or seven like influencers and i would reach out to them on linkedin and be like i love your podcast these are my takeaways as is what i got from this specific episode and they loved it so linkedin i think podcasting so love what you're both doing obviously like the ripple effects is profound i can't even really comprehend that but the linkedin is a good i mean i worked at linkedin so maybe i'm biased you jimmy mean i met on linkedin that's how we met so you fans too alright so i stand by my linkedin comment and in the framework that i always teach all of my men and in in some of the courses as well as and my mastermind is you reach out and then you do like at least ten minutes of reading their profile right mentioned i one either podcast they've been interviewing on an article they wrote so something very specific that you enjoyed and why it was meaningful to you right well we'll first start off with like some sort of acknowledgment right it's like hey like i you know i aspire to be like you one day so some sort of like acknowledgment and then the second part that i just mentioned and then make an ask of them like a fifteen hey would you be open to fifteen minutes and offer two times right because you wanna reduce friction as much as possible and just that very simple framework has gotten my entities like hundreds of mentors over over the their lifetime and eight out of nine times like people we respond by even if it's not right now they'll respond back eventually you literally followed the exact advice i can't remember what episode we had but we did one an episode for people looking to reach out to people on linkedin and it's exactly that start with a little flattering gets you gets too far have you know something really specific and semi specific you wanna work on with them you know if it's yeah hey i see that you are great at you know this content marketing and you're getting a lot of traction i'd love to hear more about how you started that or you know like yeah sure just really understanding maybe what this person can help you with because i do think some mentors feel intimidated or they're not sure what to offer they don't know what this person gonna ask them so if they know that you're having a really specific conversation potentially or you know in your case it sounds like people really identify with your story say hey i have a similar story you know and i'd love to connect on how you grew or have you so i think that's specificity at least for me helps yeah i agree davidson i have a couple rapid fire word associations i'd like to ask you this is our verbal ro sox test here so okay be a couple words i think this will be easy for you and just tell me exactly what comes in mind there's no wrong and no right answer right thank you so when i say the word mentor you say vulnerability okay how about when i say men the love sponsor executive i thought you're gonna go with oh like yeah i i need sponsorship here we go love it and lastly how about coach objectivity okay and then another question for you is we like to talk about symbols that are able to kind of allow people to be more vulnerable and share and so they create community and kind of bring people to a more you know human level the symbol we often use is like book club and so i give my mom a hard time and say say mom you might read the book but nobody else does everybody just go drink wine and it's the book that brings you together and they talk about what's going on in their lives so so i'm curious do you know of any symbols whether it is from what community you were previously in like linkedin or maybe walking around brian park you know if you can say hey look at that rat pulling the pizza and suddenly you can have you know a much more data a deep conversation i've created a my men's group and i'm doing a lot of men's retreat so i do think men's groups are has been helpful just to have us space to cry and and process grief and some of these more difficult emotions because i do think women are naturally more are better at group getting together just sharing as a group and i think men do it like via football but it's just not it's not real right it's much superficial stuff so i i think men's group for me has been like a really good symbol where i i've heard and been able to been a part of slash facilitate take some of the most vulnerable deep processing moments yeah so so what what would be the token within meant the men's group people are together is there a little bit word or like is there a thing you know that you can be like hey you know who have it's not it's not something as rudimentary as like whoever has the talking stick and talk but like you know is there something where like oh your attention is the book in book really people there to share how they're feeling yeah yeah so impostor syndrome seems like could be like a a common theme i would insane yeah we definitely hear that a lot definitely davis this has been such an awesome conversation it has been great to get to know you is there anything that you'd like to share with us from yeah where people can find you how you want them to get in touch with you anything else you're up to yeah it's it's and and know it's been a privilege if i love doing these podcasts so if anyone is listening and also has a podcast that you think i would be able to contribute add value to your community i would love to to be a part of that yeah i think every of these opportunities just helps me stay grounded in my my truth and my my legacy and it's just been truly privileged that to meet so many cool interesting people thanks for the opportunity if you're listening to this alright david davidson and thank you so much julie jimmy i think it's time it's time to follow davidson lead and share vulnerable how many job interviews have you been on don't don't beat around the bush just give it to me what's the number three i got the third job and then i never had another job again that is the real answer how many job interviews did you have i feel like normally people when when you go up to someone goes you know how old are you they go this many hold up three fingers three i could tell you exactly who they were with but go ahead tell us well i almost got job at starbucks i i'm in regional sales not my like in store job regional sales and then i said i didn't wanna do that i applied to one p agency and had an interview and i got the job didn't take it and i had an interview the p agency and i got the job and i took it and then i left and never went back to the workforce again i mean i never went to like the job interview if you could only enter the workforce julie all the good things you'd do also think about if you go on this imagination project what if you took that sales job at starbucks you and howie howie yes would be very very well do you know why i didn't take it is because i would have to drive and at that point in my life i did not drive and it was gonna be the western suburbs of chicago and as soon as i heard i had to drive i said you don't want that and i don't want that so i said no thanks but yeah it would have been i think i would've been good selling coffee what do you think well i think that davidson would have been excellent coach for you in that day and time yes as if you could have gotten past some of your say anxieties around driving you would definitely be an eight figure millionaire hair if i if i had taken stock and yes i know i did i've always had i had major fear of driving until i was forty four and then i learned to drive when i was forty four i knew how to drive but i didn't drive between eighteen and forty four but you know you've recently driven with me it's not it's not too terrible could be worse you did the driving and you know ihop have annie so yeah and we both survived and we're here to tell with you everything was good i i i had to crawl and to go sleep when we got out you know i mean you were crying which i a little worried about seen you cry before but but we managed i was told you did help me with parking though i was trying to get you to rip you in helping me move the parking game but that's okay fine i managed it's i think it's important and it's a funny narrative i didn't expect you to say that about how when you have somebody who can see the town in you what can change going back to what davidson told us you know shout out mike who was davidson mentor in the quote you know if i had an ounce of your talent i would not waste it and when you can have somebody say that to you and mean it because they get into the details of where your talent lies and how to activate it it's such a powerful experience and you know whether you're in tech sales whether you're thinking about doing sales for starbucks or dunkin donuts if you're on the east coast do there's so much it's just so powerful have someone support you like that yeah answer see that in yourself before you do and i think working with younger people like you do a students or i have with like younger team members what have you you really can see like oh this person has this superpower and they don't even know it and i can remember some really specific conversations with some junior team members and helping them really see it because i saw i knew it would benefit them and it would benefit our organization and helping them really tease it out and see it themselves it's it's one of the greatest things i think mentors can do for you because i have the perspective that you don't have meant that and and part of that kind of mentorship i think davidson really you know knocked out of the park during a rapid fire association where you just heard him saying when i say men t davidson said love and i took that less as the men loves the mentor and more that the needs to love themselves and that mentor helps the men unlock that ability to let down at least d men armor with themselves it's gonna give you a lot of power in whatever impact you're trying to achieve yes and it is a secret weapon that battles impostor syndrome i think when you are able to that love for yourself and see those things in yourself that is a thing that i think dissipate the impostor syndrome i'm trying to think of the name of a chemical that makes things disappear and i can't think of one right now but that's what makes it disappear so i totally agree i i thought davidson i was really impressed with a wide variety of different areas that davidson since been in and his young life and the fact that he continues to try to advocate for others to help others to talk about things that are hard to talk about in a really public way and make people feel okay about talking about it so i really enjoyed meeting davidson i'm excited to see where he goes from here shout out davidson thank you for the books i appreciate it i have them right here i'm gonna hold them up one redefining masculinity and two e n f p una en p check them out thank you for spending time with us davidson out wow you've made it this far and we thank you hopefully you enjoyed our episode and discovered new ways to bring more authentic connection into your mentoring relationships wanna tell him more jimmy be an au with us visit our website for the best interactive mentoring content at au mentors dot us share our podcast with someone you care about like and subscribe and yes really you following our show and writing a review it's a big deal your actions provide us with the resources to continue our undefeated une uncovered prize winning productions we welcome questions and suggestions via email high at au dot us or on social with our handle at au hq we are most active and available on linkedin and youtube shout out in earnest thank you to our intrepid producer e cad we appreciate you augmented out see you

hello we are au and we build through mentoring i'm julie and i'm jimmy and today we are joined by coco brown mentor advocate and founder and ceo of the at athena alliance an executive learning community that accelerates leadership advancement to the c suite the ceo's office and the boardroom we were very lucky to have coco share with us how you can become empowered when you realize that everybody is an imp and we all share such syndrome and julie and i were educated on the strength of weak ties as that is how we have grown our network well beyond the infamous dunbar number of one hundred and fifty so with coco here we go alright so we are so excited for our guest today coco brown who is an incredibly accomplished human and done some amazing things including at the moment being the ceo of the athena alliance and before we jump into all the things cocoa is up to coco welcome we're so happy you're on augment with us today thank you it's terrific to be here thank you well coco one of the ways we have our guests on mentors introduce them cells is what we see is a mentor is someone who believes in you before you believed in yourself and we'd love to know who was that for you and what did they see you know there there's since are so many yeah there's lots of people and sometimes i would say it's not just that they believed in me before i believed in myself but they gave me that extra confidence that i needed maybe so for example a situation that comes really strongly to mind is when i was twenty seven twenty eight years old twenty eight years old and this guy named build wire after a series of events invited me to come represent a sort of ama team that they were going to create a a professional services team for a company that is a professional services company but we had all of these sort of dispersed teams that were not kind of under one umbrella and they were thinking about how to bring it together and i was just the leader of one of the teams and he asked me to come speak at a at an off site where all the top executives were discussing the company and present and present the concept and present what was going on with all of these you know dispersed teams and afterwards he said would you like to run the team and i said sure so you know what what i think he did for me was he ignored the fact that i was very young and a woman which actually has a meaning here because ninety percent or so of that team was male because our business was in the deep it infrastructure space so servers and networks and devops and cloud and you know all these things that you don't tend for to find women and particularly back in nineteen ninety seven ninety eight so he ignored the fact that i was a woman he ignored the fact that i was young and he also ignored the fact that i was non tech pickle meaning i was not representative of the technology ecosystem that we were supporting i had been a psych major so you know he he definitely had to do a lot of mentoring for me to pull me up constantly in my confidence that i could just go figure it out that is amazing coco was there like a particular phrase that he said to you or there particular words that he used that stick to your you kinda like stick in your mind today you know there were there was a moment and it was a little jarring and perhaps at the time you know on unsettling and remember being in this car and i was i was talking about some a mistake i had made and something that i was nervous about and i felt myself sort of you know emotionally choking up and he had zero empathy for it which i was interesting that and just kind of looked at me like why are you doing that to yourself and i've had you know a number of moments throughout my career where people have sat across the table from me saying why are you apologizing for what you don't know or or why are you you know focused on your mistakes and the world around you is constantly puff itself up and pretending it knows so much more than it does there's no need for you to you know show it how a little you know right like like that aaron it wasn't he didn't say that but there there was a moment with him where i felt that and then there's been moments like that that i've felt over my career with different people saying that in different ways to me you gotta love how a a little bit of a push sometimes can really change the way you view something even though if maybe you know tough mentor love isn't well always appreciate in the moment and it's something julian and i have talked about quite a bit the differences between empathy and compassion i'm curious coco like how do you view this you know given your experience leading teams you know how do you piece out the words the differences between empathy you know sharing and feeling the feelings of somebody else in compassion like understanding the feelings but maybe providing the feedback that you feel is needed to address those feelings yeah i mean i think the the best if i had to choose between the two in a corporate setting i'd prefer compassion i think because yeah because empathy can sometimes i think hold you back from saying the things that need to be said and and from helping the other person see things in more of a methodical clear way and i don't know if this is a good example of it but i i think my own career accelerated so quickly by the time i was twenty eight i was running you know a seven hundred person off operation i was i was running something way bigger than my age and way bigger than my experience and and i was just meeting last week like literally last week i met this young woman who was employee number twenty five at a company that's now eleven hundred employees and she runs she's the vp of hr and she's nine years into her career so i was doing the math and i'm like oh i know that i know that story right and my the empathy in me for that story is like i know she started talking a bit about impostor syndrome you know and trying to deal with impostor syndrome and the empathy in me is like yeah i get it i totally get it because you you know have accelerated so quickly but the compassion in me said you know you're where you and your career have compact in nine years what it takes a lot of people thirty years to do so the fact is is you are an impostor and all of us are right you're just feeling it in a compact way because you're rate of change is so dramatic that you you have to you have to evolve like so much faster and so that sense of like oh my i don't know what i'm doing and i i like is legitimately a daily experience for you whereas people who take a longer time to experience their career and settle into things don't necessarily have quite that same level of experience with impostor if you will which i i think we should embrace that particularly as someone who felt it all the time because of the compact experiences i had so you know i i guess that might be for me an example of holding both empathy for her but then just kinda of being like on the compassion side like here's how we have to deal with that and just like yeah let it go you know it it exists because it exists now how do we leverage it yeah i love that i had never thought of that that like you actually just might be an impostor and it's okay not to say you have to get over it or you have to like you know it's like no you probably kind of are and especially i always hear those stories that blow my mind of people who show you know age twenty twenty two and they're running these massive companies like how would they ever know what they're doing mh but yeah it's okay you just like are an impostor and i'm curious coco how you see mentoring fit in with that i mean it sounds like you are showing up as a mentor to this incredible person running this eleven hundred person hr or you know team it running hr for an eleven hundred person company how do you see mentoring and kind of help bridge that gap between the amount of time it takes to really know what you're doing and where you are today yeah i mean i think if she's an example i i just met her and i mean never talk to her again i don't know but that was a mentoring moment right and and i've had lots of those moments in my career where someone said something that blew my mind made me think gave me something to work with and help me keep moving forward and i think where i sometimes i think we get hung up in maybe two nuanced of a or maybe yeah two not nuanced of a definition of mentoring that we don't give it necessarily the the breadth of value that it can have you know by by saying i'm looking for a mentor or i'm trying to you know or somebody asking me to be their mentor it's it feels con confined you know when somebody asks me if if i'll be their mentor i'm like well what do you mean like for because i'm person do i have to decide contract are we want like have pinky pinky swear exactly like you know and then they say things like well you know could could we meet once a month and like for what purpose you know like it's not necessarily that that's what creates mentoring is like consistent connection to each other and i think this is particularly for underrepresented people i think you know there's been studies that came out of stanford and i forget the professor name but he it as long ago as i think it was nineteen seventy four on the on the strength of week ties and oh what is that the concept around the strength of week ties is by contrast to strong ties strong ties being your core groups of of various different types your family your you know your church your soccer team your kids you know pto what what whatever wherever your sort of circles of of strong connections are those strong connections the challenge with them is that in life they're fantastic because they give you a sense of a place to let your guard down to kind of self reflect to self actual to be amongst those who are like you and that that you relate to and share values within and all these sorts of things the challenge with that by contrast is that sometimes they hold you back they first of all if they've got things to offer you from a connection standpoint a mentoring standpoint a you know a career guidance or or ability to move you forward generally those that value plays out you know it's it's they've given you what they can give you and it it becomes sort of like rub your shoulders throw you back into the ring remember when i said remember you know you got this get back in there the other side of those core strong ties that can be can set you back is that they also wanna protect you so they may hold you back from things that empathetic you know they're scared for you and so they may not let you push forward as fast as you want to so they may hold back a connection or you know yeah go for it when they themselves are kinda like i don't know is that gonna fail and and sometimes also they you know they they judge you even when they don't want to you know well coco handled that situation kinda poorly so i'm not sure if i should introduce her to so and so and so that's you know that's kind of the downside of strong ties weak ties by contrast are where you know you kind of connection to connection to connection to connection be to get to what you're looking for so for me to from a mentoring standpoint i look for a lot of weak ties in that because there's people in a moment who can say something brilliant and then they make a connection for you and they say and i'll introduce you just so and so who makes another brilliant observation in a moment and you don't need to hold on to them tight too tightly because they aren't necessarily gonna move you forward as fast as your willingness to let one thing lead to another thing to another thing to another thing i loved your comment on when somebody asked me to be a mentor it feels so con confined and and i was curious if that's kind of playing into your feeling and interpretation of the theory of weak ties where as a mentor we like have to do this thing we're supposed to be connected in this way as opposed to with a week tie i can show up i can help and i kinda just let you go but if it's just like this really intense connection it's monthly you know i there's that protection and maybe like you're not ready you know kind of interplay so yeah i i if you could talk more about just your feelings of being asked to be finding and how it relates to week ties yeah exactly what you described it in fact actually just this morning thing i reached out to someone i haven't talked to in over a year and i said hey i i need your advice on something and just like two sentence says of the high level what i'm considering and he happens to have the specific you know experience that i'm looking for advice on that i it's like scary on uncharted territory and i even said that to him you know this is both exciting and terrifying do you have a few minutes for me and his response things in life exactly terrible the best exactly and his response to me was anytime coco i'm in zurich right now but you know like i haven't talked to him forever but but that's a contained really like i i understand where he can bring value to me and i'm am sensitive to not general that and because when you generalize that and you just say oh this is a fantastic person with all this fantastic experience and generalized them as a mentor to me that's that's that's both con combining and overwhelming that for them is overwhelming right like oh no here goes coco again and but but when it's targeted and it's you know specific it's it's doable and i think that's particularly true on kind of a couple of different levels one when the gut divide is so big you know it's like you're young in career and you see this fabulous person you're like i want them as my meant mentor like that divide is so big that that that can that may seem exciting to the young person but to the to the person with all the wisdom they don't have it all to share right they they they can't really take you under their way but they can be there in moments for you when when you need it you know and and you can discover with them the best leverage of their moments sometimes are the one who picks you up off the ground and says you got this sometimes they're the one who says okay specifically how you handle the situation to up right that's that's what i mean and it's also week ties because imagine trying to do that with everyone and hold on to those as really strong ties that do is is impossible to do so if you can just sort of have hundreds of people that that you're doing doing this with it's much you will create a lot more the key though is also reciprocity i will say mh because you can't keep going back i love betsy atkins language and i don't know if it's hers but i heard it her first from hers like you can't take you can't take a withdrawal from the bank without making deposits alright so you do and it can be as simple as like hey jim i really need your advice you're the sage on this topic that's terrifying me and exciting for him that feels reciprocal because he's like yeah wow like some of it can be just in how you how you make them feel and how you follow up to thank them you know and how you tell them the outcome it can be reciprocity doesn't have to be any more than that it can also be you know young people having a mastery of stuff we in our later years don't have and them sharing some with their knowledge right and also i think sometimes you just know that it's i you to have in china and it was like gu right so it's like you also know that you might just be there might be a car back giving back that's not necessarily to that person so you know that sometimes you're just giving to somebody and you know that you have gotten in the same way but not even necessarily from the same person so i love that and i think we always talk about how much mentors learn from men and how much when you could get like all mentors are lifelong learners because when you really show up in somebody's life and and learn about what they're going through even if it's just a you know kind of what we call like a connection just a small you get something and you it sticks with you and you're able to really share those people people's experiences but i really wanna talk about athena alliance because i feel like this idea of having hundreds of people thousand people who have all of these different you know pieces that you can kind of add into your life sounds like is that maybe one of the impetus for you starting it and we'd love to hear more about it yeah i mean it's a core underpinning of how we structure ourselves is this idea around strength week highs and you know moment touch points that are super meaningful and so we do that in a number of different ways first of all how i came to start at the was i back in two thousand five when i was running tow and i was i was you know at that point thirty four years old and you know struggling more with my sense of confidence when i'd walk into big rooms as you know this young non technical woman not as young but the stakes were higher i been with cios now chief information on officers and so i gathered around a a group of women's cios like meet them and they'd say oh i'm the only one in the ballet and i'd say no there's their jeremy jerry martin flicking and sunny has martin even i'm not showing gina hey wait a minute one of them said let's let's get together that and so i started a dinner group and it was just a place for us to talk about data center strategy and business continuity planning and networks architecture without other noise and and people would be like what do you guys talk about at your women's dinners and they have this impression that we're talking about woe is me and you know how hard and it's being a mother and yeah little of that came but most of it was like we're just talking about business without anybody looking at us funny or us feeling funny right so so that was a core experience for me that led into athena which is an ecosystem of business women and and when you look at that on on also a bell curve you know popular media tells us that women been opt out at thirty five but the average age of the female leader is forty five and i will argue that's where we're leaning in and we really need the strength of weaving ties and so we can do it in a a number of different ways we're all each other's meant for and so in order to make that happen we have to have all sorts of a combination of all sorts of things we have twenty different peer groups that meet monthly so that's where you can align with affinity and say we're gonna talk about this thing that's our affinity whether it's about a role or goal or just an interest we have and those are growing you know we'll have more and more we have salons tracks where we talk specifically about modern boardroom career care and pulse check we we have one to one connections that we make between members via a member success manager a human who creates a warm link that is purposeful for an intent and that's the spot mentoring piece right we also do in person live you know eighty in person meetups every year so actually this last year we did fifty this year we're doing eighty plus cool so there's this this ecosystem that is centered around we are all each other's mentors it's okay if we touch each other and then leave you know we we and and a part of that is about the ethos it's about the like all buying in to this concept of we need with ties we need each other we can do this intimately and with trust and care without having to develop a deep relationship so coco i i love branding so i have to ask we odd talk about like the hydrogen bonds of relationships throughout an organization that mentoring can create and that you know you know ice you know stronger than the water obviously weak ties also though isn't it necessarily you know showing like the true power behind the connections what are we gonna do to come up with a better name for relationships that aren't part of you know your dunbar number of a hundred and fifty yeah well i i think the strong tie then the bond becomes you know where i was saying you know we can we can touch and leave and touch and leave and and give each other really meaningful points of mentoring or or or advice or guidance the strong tie is to the ecosystem the trust that the ecosystem works oh right i i think that's where the strong tie comes it's not individuals it's a it it's the it's the organizing structure around it it's the community do you use that how do you feel about i use it but i well so alliance you know i'd love the word alliance because alliance is it's the act of being allied or ally it's a bond between parties it's a it's an agreement to work together toward a common goal so to me it's it's more structured than community i think you know community within that alliance comes from culture and comes from a sensible longing you know and so the alliance though is is what we're doing we're we're we're ally together to say this is an ecosystem where we're moving each other forward where i'm moving forward you're moving forward we're achieving things and in order for this ecosystem to work we are all working in a mentoring capacity for each other and community comes from the sense that i buy into the way we do it the culture and i believe i see myself here i belong here this is great you know what i i think it it's sort of that interesting we we like to always say that the suffix ship means an agreement so you're if it's mentor mentorship there's an agreement between people partnership you know etcetera so i like how you said you know alliance is that like agreement for a common goal and i'm like yeah like you know nato has been in the news a lot lately that's an alliance and there might not be belonging necessarily between different countries is definitely an agreement so i i thought that was excellent definition i think there's the agreement and what we're struggling with is the is the trust and you know that sort of sense of belonging like i thought i belonged to here but if if that's negotiable and you can decide that you don't wanna live up to the agreement but because you're bigger than me but i have to live about it like that that's where the structural aspect of it has to be supported by you know the culture this says no you know the these are the values these are the things that we all bought into when we built this alliance that keeps it whole otherwise it it's just a piece of paper yeah alright well i'm gonna keep working out about boards for a second then coco because i know have a lot of experience here and it's one of the key pieces of the athena alliance to really get more women and more under underrepresented groups of women onto boards so i'm curious what kind of feedback or training or tactics of new board members you recommend because in my experience there's usually you know kinda of two different board meetings there's a board meeting that occurs that has formal minutes and then they're the relationships you know on the way in or on the way out of the board meeting where people kinda talk about and make the deals and there's usually just one or two board members that have a lot of power beyond you know the c level the ceo that's part of the board so if you're a new board member on a you know fifteen person board nine person board what do you recommend is does mentoring play a role even though they're everyone's supposed to be appear everybody has one vote so it's it's supposedly very democratic but we know there's very huge power balances so do you have any recommendations around new board members power and how mentoring relationships can assist yeah absolutely i i mean i think sophisticated mature boards tends to give the new member a buddy they will have an onboarding process and even onboarding to the board process on board onboarding to the board process but even then it often files to that new member to to actually make those structures work and then to kinda go around and build an individual relationship with every other board member because it does operate as a collective and one of the things that's really interesting about boards that's very different today than it was four years ago is that it's truly no longer the case that boards can simply meet quarterly when covid hit they started meeting weekly and you know and now that boards are more accustomed to offline digital sort of ad hoc engagements plus the world is expecting more and more boards it's becoming more and more complex happens in the boardroom you know the breadth and the depth of what they're responsible for is getting bigger on all fronts and so individual board members you know they can't simply simply re they can ask you if you're new and you don't and there is no structure as for a buddy you know who would be a great buddy for me actually you should've have done your research on all the board members and chosen your own buddy you know like who do you want to be your buddy right and then you don't do the like hey will you be my mentor thing right you don't do the con combining and and overwhelming thing but you do say hey you know would you kinda be my buddy as i as i figure this out you know so help me understand like what happened over the last year that i should be aware of what were the big things and you know what are the dynamics here is is there a particular seat i should sit in when we sit at the table like literally literally literally yeah what is might seat at the table what is my seat at the table like just all those kinds of things and but then you also call all the other board members and you say hey i wanna have a video conference a video coffee with you i wanna get to know you i wanna do your perspective and because ultimately as you said it should work as a collective and so part of your job is to break down and any kind of structural imbalances by the way you show up as as a leader love it i'm gonna quickly do our rapid fire word association here at the end it's just four words and it go fast so when i say mentor what do you say sage how about men open open sponsor unlock mh like that yeah that's a new one and lastly coach reinforce reinforce wonderful that is hard you passed yeah excellent a plus you did great i love the unlocked that's a new one yeah that's a great one it's really good julie i took your last question you've the last last two minute question no i just wanted to say coco thank you so much as a woman leader and somebody who really deeply values the networks that have come together to support us i am so happy to have gotten to meet you and i know that you were making a massive impact the women that you are helping julie jimmy i have secret i'm i'm listening we're all impostor why didn't you tell me before why did you ring for coconut to tell me do you think you have impostor syndrome oh yeah why why do i sweat so heavily when i walk to a classroom still it's one of the reasons i wear a jacket you are a big sweater i oh in my let you let's just they'll say it all got a little puddle around me on the floor while my i podcast like john thompson the third i'm a tell i i don't know i didn't i did not think of you as somebody as having impostor syndrome i think maybe i think of impostor syndrome as something much more serious like where people actually can't just like a complete and total barrier like a you know brick wall block versus something that i think most people kind of feel think about and then find a way to get around it but i appreciated how she how cocoa really brought kind of a different perspective on it because at the end of the day right we are all impostor and that we've never been this age at this moment having as much experience as we have so i really liked that perspective and maybe just kinda changing the language around it mh which is it like things are scary and uncertain and it's hard to know how you're going to be perceived by others and it's hard to know if you have all the skills you need and honestly for board members especially people who have not been on a board before if you feel like that you're a little worried and will you have value on a board you're probably exactly the kind of person that board needs they don't need somebody coming in and say oh yeah i'll figure it all out y'all have messed it up before boards need people to listen totally or i know everything i know everything and so i'm just gonna tell you everything i know and not listen i love that i'm on my first board for the first time and it is a bit like whoa okay it's a lot to get your head around it's exciting but it is also a new skill set and maybe i do feel like a little bit of an imp now that we're talking about it but i know and i thought we're all talk wrong boss and i do sweat a lot too i'm just words it's worth but i also love the week ties because i think that's really important right that there's is this idea that kind of if you invest in time with somebody that has to be somebody that you are gonna spend a lot of time with and you're gonna have to have a lot of conversations with them or it's not even worth having those first or second conversations but i recently introduced two people with the idea of you know maybe they would potentially have a mentoring relationship and they didn't have a lot of chemistry but the one woman referred the other woman to two other people the other woman to hit it off with another one of those people and sent me a note saying you know i appreciate you introducing me as one person we had a nice coffee but they introduced me as other person and like there you go so that idea doesn't have to be forever first person had nice coffee second person spilled the tea it's perfect it is beautiful and i never thought of this before because i have read so many social scientists talk about this number of a hundred and fifty also called the dunbar number where human brains have most the majority of human brains and not evolved to really keep a community of greater than a hundred and fifty people but that's in a strong pie that's in like a tribe that's like knowing how they're doing on a daily basis like being in rhythm with somebody you even if you think about that a hundred and fifty people being rhythm with is a lot that's like the school yeah it's huge you you really can't do it it's just for very few people but the idea of these weak ties and i always think about eu you're so good at keeping up with people you genuinely care but there's no way you're sending even you a hundred and fifty messages week but you may over a year's time send well more than a hundred and fifty over a five years time you're probably sending over a thousand and and that's a beautiful thing in a way to say oh these are so important they can still bring your joy hearing about this individual checking in from time to time men dropping even just a sentence or two in the future of like hey thanks just wanted to let you know x y z has happened hope you're doing well i know that we love those messages as mentors and it it's such a great framework to think about things so that's okay to have a week tie and the benefit of it right because sometimes something will come along years later and you'll remember know couple conversations you had with somebody and you can loop back with them either saying i really remember what you said and it really stuck with me and or here's an opportunity and or you know i'm looking for something in your field now and i'm really curious you know to learn more so i do think you know obviously we can all talk about the ill of social media but i do think certainly the benefit of it i'm a from a professional standpoint done linkedin or would have you it's it is a great way to be able to just have those weak ties i feel like weak ties makes it sound derogatory it seems quite negative maybe it's like loose ties maybe railroad ties real road ties that is also very negative really i i similar to hear thinking of that was very positive thing depends on who are you're tying to the railroad i guess but no highs are what the real what the train runs off that's the real especially somebody to the real track yeah this depends where you put tie tie as the verb versus the the noun is critical okay but no i loved coco i'm i think her organization sounds amazing it makes me so happy that we get a chance to have conversations when people who are taking the initiative to create things like the at athena alliance and allow women an opportunity to have the support to have the education the connections to be able to continue to make massive change either in the board room at ceo level within different organizations it's so exciting amen that yeah shadow athena alliance for real thanks coco augment out augment out wow you've made it this far and we thank you hopefully you enjoyed our episode and discovered new ways to bring more authentic connection into your mentoring relationships wanna tell him more jimmy be an au with us visit our website for the best interactive mentoring content at mentors dot us share our podcast with someone you care about like and subscribe and yes really you following our show and writing a review it's a big deal your actions provide us with the resources to continue our undefeated une uncovered prize winning productions we welcome questions and suggestions via email high at au dot us or on social with our handle at au hq we are most active and available on linkedin and youtube shout out in earnest thank you to our intrepid producer earl cad we appreciate you augmented out see you