Michael: Hello and welcome to HaBO Village podcast. I'm Michael Redman-
Kathryn: And I'm Kathryn Redman.
Michael: And this podcast is here to help you as business leaders, develop companies with more Passion and Provision that have more profit, more purpose, and leave a legacy in your money.
Kathryn: Come on.
Michael: This is what we care about. This is what this podcast is here for. It's for business development, leadership development. So you can become the best you, you have-
Kathryn: The best you, you have?
Michael: The best you, you are.
Kathryn: I like it-
Michael: To come and bring it to the company and lead the company so that you're doing an amazing job and you're impacting lives along the way and you're making a difference. Does that sound interesting? I hope so. Welcome to the podcast, Kathryn.
Kathryn: I'm interested. I don't know, I'm all about it. So-
Michael: Today's topic is...
Kathryn: Today's topic is how do I control or manage my machine gun thoughts? So I am-
Michael: As a business leader, right?
Kathryn: As a business leader. So I am married to a guy who has way more thoughts than I do. Like he has a thought a second and trying to figure out how to manage all of those thoughts, and what to dwell on and what to just move aside is a really interesting dynamic.
Michael: I just had 12 while you were doing that.
Kathryn: I'm sure you did. And it turns out that he's not alone in that. There are a lot of leaders who really, really struggle with learning a ton, taking in a ton of information and then just having rapid fire thoughts but not really having a way to channel or funnel them.
Kathryn: So this topic comes because we had a meeting with a client yesterday and really great people.
Michael: Which a lot of our content comes out of great meetings, real life scenarios and contexts with leaders.
Kathryn: Yeah. So great client, a couple actually they run a business which is even more fun for us.
Michael: A married couple?
Kathryn: A married couple running a business. I know. Give me some more of that.
Michael: Don't tell anybody.
Kathryn: And one of the things that the gentleman said they sat down to start with us as we were pulling into the parking lot and, he and his wife were talking and he said to her, "this is really good for us because I have all of these, like I just have these machine gun thoughts are running through my head all the time."
Michael: And he said, they do.
Kathryn: Yeah they do.
Michael: It's not just a guy thing.
Kathryn: It's not just him. So they have these machine gun thoughts running through their heads all the time and meeting with us gives them an opportunity to kind of funnel their thinking and then you know, potentially achieve things.
Kathryn: And then he said, "I found myself thinking this must be what therapy is like," and we just lost it because that is not the first time we've heard that comment. When people come into our conference room-
Michael: It's amazing how cathartic good thinking and having good thinking partners is, and having people who are asking you good questions to process.
Kathryn: Yeah. Well and especially you know with them. But in this particular phase of where we are in their business, we're talking about vision and dreams and strategies. And so it's going deep into the core of who they are. And that's really fun stuff but we've heard this often. This is like business counseling. So...
Michael: Yeah, and what happens with these things is everything's cruising along. You have bright, intelligent leaders I'm sure all of you on this podcast are bright and intelligent-
Kathryn: Because you're listening to this podcast so that makes you bright and intelligent.
Michael: Well, there you go. You're moving along, you've got ideas, the company is doing well, you've been around for a while or it's growing fast and you're content. But there are moments when all of us as leaders hit these places where we're stuck, we get stuck and then we get frustrated. We get confused and even potentially discouraged if we stay stuck too long. And sometimes what happens is we've taken a company to the place, you said it earlier today when we were talking, that idea that why am I super smart and can't figure this stuff out? Why am I super smart when, because, and I've read all of the books, and I've watched all of the YouTube videos.
Kathryn: I keep taking in the information, I get it. I totally get what they're saying.
Michael: Makes perfect sense. I understand it. Why?
Kathryn: Why can't I do this or what's stopping me or why can't I sort it out on my own?
Michael: I mean it was perfectly simple. The five steps I was supposed to follow in that podcast.
Kathryn: Right. And when I went to that conference a couple of weeks ago and they laid out this, this and this, and you should walk out of here knowing exactly what to do. It all made sense until I got home and then-
Michael: And every Ted talk's got it super clear in 18 minutes. So why is this happening? Because we can't always think on our own. It is easy to go fast alone. But if you want to go far and you want to accomplish much, you need to go with others. And there's a perspective that we get in our own head and it's like reading the label of the bottle from inside the bottle.
Michael: We've said this before here, so we want to talk about some ways that you can get some outside perspective-
Kathryn: Well, and feel good about it, right? Because part of the idea is that I think we get in our own heads that as leaders we ought to be able to solve this.
Michael: We ought to know it all.
Kathryn: We ought to know stuff, we ought to be at, we shouldn't need the outside help. And to ask for the outside help feels like a weakness to some, and we're going to say it is not a weakness. In fact, what is true, and we've said it before, our dear friend Terry Walling says this, "you don't get to clarity alone." Nobody gets to clarity alone. So the idea that you might need to bring in outside perspective. It's actually a really good thing and it actually shows strength and humility when you can be in a place where you realize, I need to talk this out with someone who maybe is a little further ahead in the journey or has some experience that can help me think.
Michael: So what we want to do is we, if you're thinking, okay, this is like me, I'm in one of these situations, great, we've got some ideas, we've got three different places that we think you're going to be able to process. So we're going to give you three different ideas on how to process and then we're going to give you four questions or four situations you need to talk about in that conversation. And if you walk through these four steps then you're going to have way more benefit, way more clarity, and that's going to be really helpful.
Michael: One of the things that I know as I've gotten older as a, and more experienced in business and we've consulted and work with more business leaders in larger companies and everything else, we've said this before in this podcast, but it is always amazed me and impressed me that the more successful business people are, the more they tend to be learners.
Michael: They tend to say, "I know I don't know everything." And they're really good at asking questions and wanting to learn so that they can apply and make their organization healthier or fluid. Thinking about if they, especially if they care about passion and provision, which they care about also people and relationships. So-
Kathryn: Let me say one more thing-
Michael: No, go ahead.
Kathryn: One of the things that we have kind of talks about over and over again and have really worked on with our favorite clients and our best clients is we talk about the idea not just of being a consultant, not just of being an outside voice, but being a thinking partner, right? Someone who can help you think and sort through things in a meaningful way. So that concept of someone else helping me unravel all of these thoughts is something that we have an extremely high value on, both in terms of how we do that with our clients.
Kathryn: But then also in terms of how we function in our own lives personally and professionally, because we drink our own Kool-Aid, we actually do get outside help.
Michael: And quite frankly, if you're thinking everything's going fine, look, we're as business leaders, if you're one of those people in that rare moment where you're like, it's all good, it's everything's great.
Kathryn: Don't worry, it'll get hard soon.
Michael: An old saying that was taught to us a long time ago, especially as business leaders, we are all either in a storm, going into a storm, in a storm, or coming out of a storm, or we're enjoying the peace between storms and-
Kathryn: In the eye of the storm.
Michael: And so depending on the storm, not all storms have eyes silly girl,
Kathryn: Sorry.
Michael: But there's one of the challenges we have sometimes as I'm correcting on details. Sorry, I apologize for that.
Kathryn: You're forgiving. Move on.
Michael: Okay, so you're either in between storms or you're going in a storm or coming out of a storm, or you're in the storm. I mean, it's just one of those four things. And if you're in that calm place, this is great. It's a great time to enjoy what's going on and to prep everything and get ready. So if you don't need this now, these are going to be great tools. You're going to need to know in a relatively short period of time-
Kathryn: Yeah, because the unfortunate reality of being human and being business leaders, trouble is going to come. You are going to hit walls. It's just life. So prepping for that and thinking these things through is a really good thing.
Michael: Yeah. So we're going to talk about these three different contexts in which you can get help. Like you're saying, I don't have any help or I don't know if I have help or anything like that.
Michael: Where do I go to find somebody who actually understands? Because quite frankly, we understand that being a business owner, especially when you're trying to find helpful people to process with good thinking partners, it can be very lonely. There are times when you're in that storm and you're like, "I could ask for help and the help, the suggestions I get, they're not helpful suggestions." And we want helpful suggestions.
Michael: So the first thing we're going to talk about is actually progressively in formality and cost. The first one is find a peer friend. So you want to find somebody else who has leadership experience. Maybe even running a business experience. If you don't know anybody at all getting involved in the chamber of commerce, getting involved in your local lottery regroup something like that or being involved even in a church or something, there is usually people in the community, you can find that they own and run their own business.
Kathryn: Yeah, people who have experience they're not just your friend. They're somebody who actually has some life experience, who wouldn't mind having coffee with you.
Michael: Yeah, and you can get together and have coffee every once while, say we're going to get together once a month and half coffee.
Kathryn: Right. I'd like to buy you coffee. I need some input-
Michael: And feedback. Yeah, really important. Really helpful.
Kathryn: Well, and here's the fun thing. The people who run, companies who lead, when somebody else comes along and says, "I really could use some input," most of them are super happy to give it. They really are, they're just happy to be asked.
Michael: I just got to find time on my schedule and then I'm more than happy to do it. Especially if-
Kathryn: I am honored that you would ask. And most of them are going to say yes. So yeah,
Michael: And if they don't, and occasionally they say, "I'm sorry it's not the right time for me," or whatever.
Michael: Don't take that as a personal front. If three or four people say that to you, then maybe there's something wrong and you need to work on some other things, but let's assume that's not going to happen. Okay. So the first one is having that peer or friendship. I remember a conversation with Jason early on before he was ever our business partner. He was a friend. We did life together. He was the CEO of another company that he had helped grow and be a part of. And then finally that there was a point at which he and his two partners, it was time to split up. They bought him out and he moved on. And the question, I remember him sitting there going, I have so many ideas. It was really this machine gun idea. He says, "I'm looking for something else to start.
Michael: I don't know what it is now. It's not that I don't know. Don't have ideas. It's not that I am unaware of ideas," he says, "but there's so many different potentials. I see so many ideas. I don't know which one to grab a hold of. I don't know which one is actually worth throwing my energy and time into." And then I said, [crosstalk 00:11:27] well, I have a business that needs somebody just like you and now here we are five years later, six years later, crazy. But that conversation happened at the local coffee shop we hang out with on the patio and a great, I think it was a spring, summer morning. And we're just sitting there talking and catching up. And it was just a time where you just got to talk about whatever. And part of the conversation was, well let's talk about this more and let me ask some questions.
Michael: You know, and I started asking questions, what do you want to do? What do you think would be good? Would this be a helpful idea? Blah, blah, blah. So that was the first one. That's that peer context. Right? And we have friends of ours, both of us that periodically either ask us for that kind of input or quite frankly we sit down and when we're hitting places, they're just are, they're our close friend network of people who understand and they give us informed opinions and context and just sometimes just to allow us to see the whole context because we have blinders on or tunnel vision of some sort.
Kathryn: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and so like for me, one of my dearest friends runs a nonprofit. And so to be able to talk about leadership questions and staffing and you know, this and that, she gets it. And it's super helpful.
Michael: Well you guys have, it's really neat because you guys have actually with including her husband, the four of us have a great relationship and we get to talk about things and we get to get together regularly and share life and we know what's going on. They're just wonderful people. And yet we all are leaders and we all have had leadership positions. So when we have those kinds of conversations, we, there's not a lot of, you don't have to do. And you'll understand this, folks listening, you don't have to have a lot of the pretext conversation because you know that they understand already. You don't have to explain, well the Kairos, the context, it's like they get it. You can skip so much stuff when they understand. So that's that friendship relationship. The next one does a mentorship. You may either have a mentor or we really suggest you get a mentor. Now mentorship is, what is mentorship? What does that look like?
Kathryn: It can be a little fuzzy. So-
Michael: I mean, how would you define it?
Kathryn: So mentors are people who have a little bit more life experience than you do, especially in an area that you're looking for help and can hear you out, but also give valuable input, right? So they're not just someone who's listening and they're actually someone who can actually give you some direction and put into you and provide some different ways to think perhaps based on their life experience. So someone who's, further along than you are.
Michael: And can that mentor be older or younger? Could they be younger? Is really,
Kathryn: I think they can be younger. There are people who are younger than me that have more life experience in certain things. And I think that there are times when being younger isn't helpful. It's hard.
Michael: Yeah. So I think one of the things that I would bring up, so I'll bring up Ryan Dice. Many of you don't know who Ryan is. Ryan is CEO of a digital training company and co-owner of several other companies in his portfolio. He's super successful. He's 38 years old. And recently I flew down to Austin and had lunch with him just because he had input and experience in an area and quite frankly a giving heart. He had the right heart, we share values with them and all that kind of stuff. And he was willing to, I didn't have answers to certain something that I knew he did and I didn't know anybody else, quite frankly, that I felt close enough to ask the question. And so I combined it with a business trip, but went down to Austin and periodically we talk, he's been, Ryan's been on this podcast before.
Michael: We have a relationship, we show up and he's willing to make time. He's just a great guy. But it was a little weird and I felt a little uncomfortable and even felt dumb asking a 38 year old, I'm 52 now.
Kathryn: You are 51 and it's all different.
Michael: 51, totally different.
Kathryn: Because now it'd be totally inappropriate.
Michael: And I remember even saying some stuff that you, I was a little uncomfortable and I feel like I'm way behind him and all that kind of stuff in the things that he's done and he just, he was so gracious to me. Even in that going, I started way before you and he's right. He did start way before me. And so all of that said, the mentors can be very specific in specific areas. They don't always have to have more life experience, if they've had enough life experience. And running several companies and having the business partners he's had, he's had enough relational conflict.
Michael: He's married and has four kids. He knows what creating a herd does to you and trying to be a good dad at the same time.
Kathryn: Creating a herd.
Michael: He's got a herd. And then when they travel, they travel with his mom. So they had to buy a bigger car, they had the minivan for a long time. And so that's a situation. And then there are times when Chris Thrasher Wheatley, there are certain things that Chris does in his leadership that are just such great insights. It's like in this specific topic, would you mentor me a little bit? Would you teach me and train me and talk to me about how you do this? I think his ability to find people and develop them into leaders is pretty significant. And he's pretty systematic about it and he's got a very systematic way of thinking things and it's repeatable. So it's repeatable and it's time tested.
Michael: He's been at this now for 10 years doing this and his growth isn't as explosive as he wants it to be. And I've had chance to coach him. But there are places in where like when you're doing this better than I am. And I'm doing it well, but I want to take it beyond what I can do. And-
Kathryn: I think those are really good insights. When I think about it like that, there are a lot of people who are younger than me that I'm learning from. Actually I'm thinking of that more formal. We get together and you mentor me kind of thing.
Michael: Well and I wanted to talk about that because that's-
Kathryn: Super important.
Michael: I think that's a realistic version. I think there are multiple versions of mentoring. I think there are multiple timelines. One's not longterm, some are short term, but some are longterm.
Michael: And then I think the most common, and quite frankly the one I love the most is that one where you're in a regular relationship mentoring. So a leadership role of mentoring that lasted for several years for us was Jim Desmore. Jim is in his eighties now. Jim actually, when we were first introduced to Jim and he started mentoring us, he had a consulting firm and he had this other company that was in the music industry and we've talked about that for it was ultimate stands. And quite frankly, he'd started from nothing and created an international brand before that he worked with Walmart in the executive team for 800 stores. So he had a bit of -
Kathryn: He was like the 12th employee of Walmart and grew it from like helped grow it from like five stores to 800 or something.
Michael: Yes. Three, because they were Ben Franklins before they were Walmart's.
Kathryn: Yes. [inaudible 00:19:02] Arkansas people.
Michael: Yeah. And so I mean but he is a person who had more life experience. He-
Kathryn: Way more business experience.
Michael: Way more business experience, way broader business experience. He had small business experience and corporate business experience. What he started with Walmart having three Ben Franklin stores, which are, if you don't know about those, those were arts and craft stores throughout the country back in the fifties, sixties and I guess into the 70s and I actually worked at one once in high school. And so that was a small business too because you had two brothers, Sam Walton and his brother running three craft stores. And it was a chain, but it was like that was a small business. They didn't have that many employees and they were all, a lot of them were part time place and they grew that. So he watched that small business grow. He watched his own small business grow.
Michael: He became a mentor of us. He talked to us. We would travel to see him, he would travel to see us. He was amazing and he just poured into our lives. And folks, a lot of times the mentoring is, doesn't cost you any money. And in our relationship with Jim, it didn't cost us any money. He never charged us his time. And he did do this professionally, but it was a special thing that happened. It was one of those special moments you don't want to ever impose on professionals ever to give you something for free unless they offer it to you. And we didn't impose on him. He totally offered it. But it turned into a special relationship to where we still communicate today. But that started 12 years ago, 13 years ago.
Kathryn: Yeah. And my favorite thing about Jim is he can't say specific. He says Pacific. My favorite thing, every time I hear the word specific, I think of Jim and I go...
Michael: And it's his regular vernacular, I've heard him say Pacific, but I truly believe now at this point he was running a bit of a con being a Southern draw and just being a simple boy from Arkansas. And-
Kathryn: So he trained himself to say Pacific instead of specific? Make him more approachable
Michael: I think he specifically, I mean he went to university and graduated and everything else he played college ball, but he was, I think of what I was, is that really tricky. He was good in negotiations because you underestimate him. You underestimate people who don't speak well.
Kathryn: That's awesome.
Michael: And he was nobody to trifle with.
Kathryn: No, he was not.
Michael: No. Not at all. Okay. So let's move onto the third one. The third one is the formal coach consultant. We do this for our profession at Half a Bubble Out.
Michael: We work with folks, business leaders in business development and marketing. I've been doing this for almost 18 years and there's a formal coach, mentor, consultant position. You can find different folks out there at different stages of their career it costs, but what you're getting as you go up this list is you're getting people who are more experienced, more experienced in the area you're talking about, they're farther along than you are. They're more experienced at asking questions. Usually a good mentor knows how to guide and help people go along and to avoid the landmines or many of them.
Michael: And then a professional coach, consultant, we work with folks and we're trained, we continue to hone our skills on question-asking processing, being able to have insight. You're talking about this, but what I see behind you is this. Our clients that were in yesterday, a couple of the aha moments they had or they were saying X and we were able to say, "okay, have you thought about ABC in the midst of that and the impact of that on you and your team?"
Michael: And she was like, "Wow, no, I hadn't thought about that." And so it was a great example of having that. And we do that on a regular basis so we have more practice experience. So those are the three different contexts. Now, let's talk about what happens when you go into those contexts. How do I think through those things Kathryn? What if I'm going to say to anybody listening today, we're going to talk to anybody listening today. We are talking to them. What four things would we suggest they talk about? Ask if you're in that peer relationship, say to your friend, Hey, would you ask me these four questions or, and let's talk about these four things in order or the mentor. If they're not, I would really love it if you process with me this way.
Kathryn: Yeah, so we kind of have a model that we go through that it spells that idea, but the first part of it is identify. So you to be asking your mentor, coach, peer, whatever level of relationship in this case to ask you the question of all the things that are happening in your head, all this machine gun thoughts, what would be the most helpful thing to talk about? So you begin to identify kind of the core desire or the core topic. The second step then is to say, okay, what would be a good outcome? Right?
Michael: The first one we've honed in on, right?
Kathryn: So we now know, okay, we need to know what the topic is because otherwise you just machine gun everything in the conversation and you come away not having clarified anything-
Michael: Because you didn't stay on topic. So this is real important. What topic are you going to speak on? What are you going to brainstorm on or?
Kathryn: And then giving them permission to keep you on topic, right?
Michael: Perfect.
Kathryn: Yeah. So that's kind of the first piece of it. And then the second question that you want them to be asking you or whatever is to be able to say, if you could paint an outcome today, what would the desired outcome be? So think of it like, you know what? I really want to talk about this challenge I'm having with this employee. Okay. What would the desired outcome be? I really need to gain clarity around whether it's them or me. Okay, great. Let's go after that. Right? So to be able to kind of do that kind of thinking and asking of your person that is helping you to say, okay, these are the ways I would love to be helped because otherwise I will not stay on topic or I will not stay on track. So those are the first two. Why don't you take three and four?
Michael: Well, let's, before I jump into those real quick, how long should you spend on step one?
Kathryn: Step one. I mean, if you're having an hour conversation, I would say step one is like, you've done five minutes of hello, chit chat, whatever. But I would say like five minutes.
Michael: Okay. So lets get to the point, let's just clarify step two. So how important is it that I make sure that what the outcome I have is a realistic outcome.
Kathryn: It's important. So you spend a little time on that one-
Michael: So you spend a little bit more time, maybe 10 minutes on that one going and if you can get through it faster, great. But making sure that your outcome is specific enough.
Kathryn: Then it's doable.
Michael: It needs to be because sometimes it's pretty vague and then it's hard to come up with a have to achieve an outcome. You're also, the outcome is I want to fix this employee that's too big. You're having clarity over is it them or me or it's having clarity over them or me and then knowing what my next step is, is a great outcome, okay. Three and four. The describe the situation. Okay. Now we've got the topic and I have found that it helps when I want somebody coaching me and we, Kathryn and I have a coach that when we are sitting there talking to somebody, I want you to ask me, okay, describe the situation. Tell me about the situation as opposed to, I'm just trying to answer all these questions. It's a very strange thing, but often it's just helpful to have an extra person outside of you. Ask the question specifically. We hear that differently in our mind in our brain and we interpret that differently than us just asking ourselves.
Kathryn: Well, and talking out loud about something. So I'm going to say what you just said, but in a little bit different way. When I get trapped in my own head, I sometimes just get really stuck and the minute I can audible or write or do something that gets it out of my head and into tangible words that I can look at or someone else has heard, sometimes I'm solid at myself. Right? Like you just like, Oh my gosh, I think I understand what's happening here. So there's something really powerful in just having the opportunity to articulate and be listened to.
Michael: Yeah, absolutely.
Kathryn: Big deal.
Michael: And in that description process, you're giving this person freedom to ask you questions because even when you're in that situation where you go, Oh my gosh, I just thought of, well, it just seems like, Oh, this makes sense. What are you missing? Are you missing anything? And you want them to ask questions like, okay, let's explore that and let them poke around and ask you questions because you want it. Really what you're after is, does that answer, it seems crystal clear to me.
Michael: Does it seem crystal clear to you? Does it seem obvious to you? And then I'm always, and even if they say yes, I'm like, can you see any problems to that? I'm oftentimes asking my coach and then they have to flip over and ask me questions like, okay, well what do you think there are? Because you want to think through, okay, is this crystal clear for a lot of times when you're in this session at this point you're, it's not crystal clear even when you articulate it out loud, you need somebody to ask you questions, ask you to identify terms.
Michael: What do you mean by that? Just dig deeper and have that conversation about it and check with you. So that's really the describe the situation. And that should probably take a half hour in an hour session. That's going to take a half hour. It's a 40-45 minutes. So now if you've got five minutes into, what are we talking about? And another five to 10 minutes trying to identify clearly what would be a good outcome, then if that's 10 minutes, you're 15 minutes in, you spend 30-35 minutes now on the subject, then it's really good to go, okay, I think we have enough discussion at the moment.
Michael: Do we know enough? Do we have enough to get to a place where we go, where we have clarity, we can create some kind of action step out of that. Just having the conversation, especially in a business context, as leaders, we need to take action. We're having this conversation to take action. We're having this action opportunity so that we can get clarity so we can either not do certain things or do other things.
Kathryn: I mean one of the things that we will do with our clients always is give them homework, because otherwise they can just leave and forget about everything because they're not being forced to reengage the content. Right. And that's the biggest challenge with taking in information from the outside is there's nothing holding you accountable to process the content and really do something about it.
Michael: And part of what happens is if you can't find an individual situation, the other thing that you can do or add to all of this, it's a great add to the mix is being a part of a group and having, especially when there's group coaching going on or something like that, it allows you a little bit more formality and it's less expensive than paying for a full time consultant. All the other aspect, the money is really worth it. The other challenge sometimes is it's hard to find somebody who you really trust and believe that they're going to be skilled and wise and give you good counsel and ask you good questions, so you want to look at that. One of those things, when I was saying group coaching, we run a group called HaBO Village, that is habovillage.com which is part of our membership.
Michael: We only open our membership a couple of times a year, but our membership is, we've started it to start working with folks that either aren't ready for a full time consulting situation or want to be in a learning situation where they're dialogue things more and doing it with other leaders. So we have a group coaching session once a week that we get on Zoom and do that kind of stuff. And that is also helpful because sometimes when somebody else is in the hot seat and they're getting talked and they're sharing their challenges when nobody else has got them, it's really educational to hear somebody else processing because you can identify and find nuggets in those things. So that's another thing that is out there. It's another thing that we do that we found that's really valuable and we're even part of a couple of those groups that are super valuable. Okay. So let's wrap up and kind of recondense what we said today. So how would you reiterate today's podcast, Kathryn?
Kathryn: So today is about how do you deal with the machine gun thoughts that are going through your head and the importance of understanding that getting outside help and perspective doesn't make you weak. It makes you actually a better leader and it makes you a wiser leader because you realize that you cannot read the label from inside the bottle.
Michael: Perfect. The three situations that they can go after...
Kathryn: Yeah. You can go after a friend situation where you just have somebody who maybe is in a similar stage of life, has some experience, but is more of a friend that you can have conversations with. You could go to a formal mentoring type of situation where you're actually asking somebody to specifically pour into your life whether that's a one or two time thing or whether that's a longer term thing.
Michael: Absolutely.
Kathryn: And as we discussed, they could be older or younger ending on the situation.
Kathryn: And then the third would be actually hiring a formal coach or mentor or consultant in a certain area because you really do need to step up and move forward and you're not finding the help that you need to move forward in these other two situations.
Michael: Perfect. And then our IDEA. Walk through the IDEA acronym one more time.
Kathryn: Yeah. So we didn't really do a good job of saying what that was, but it was identify, right? So what's the situation we need to talk about? Of all the things we could talk about, what do you want to talk about? Discover we're going to do a little bit more, help me understand, describe the situation, what's going on, right? Evaluate is where you really dig in and start going to like help me process. There's a lot of questions that happen in the evaluate stage.
Kathryn: That's that longer period of time. And then the a is for act. What is an action step that's doable and realistic that we can take as a result of the conversation so that it's not just having had a conversation but with no outcome?
Michael: So if you're taking notes, the IDEA is the acronym and it's identify, discover, evaluate, act. Really helpful tool, and we even keep that in our wallet. [crosstalk 00:33:42] I'm in my wallet,
Kathryn: My friend Terry walling, leader breakthrough brought that up.
Michael: That is really helpful. Okay.
Kathryn: Because all of our ideas are good ideas from other people and then sometimes we have our own, but a lot of them are because we're getting outside input and those are great.
Michael: We've done a lot of learning and studying so that we can help our listeners and our clients. So we want to say thank you again today.
Michael: Hey, if this is helpful at all, valuable at all, we would love it if you would hit subscribe in Apple podcast or any other service that you're in. Do a thumbs up, a like and we would love it if you would even leave a review. But those subscribe buttons are actually helping indicate to the algorithms out there that more people value-
Kathryn: The podcast gods.
Michael: Till the podcast guys. Okay. That said, I just want to say thank you again for coming today. We really are excited and-
Kathryn: And if you have any interest at all in just learning more about that membership that we run, go to habovillage.com and sign up on the wait list and we'll start communicating with you about when things are coming, what we're doing, and all that fun stuff.
Michael: You get some great email tips along the way for things going on in business. So for the HaBO Village podcast, I'm Michael Redman.
Kathryn: I'm Kathryn Redman.
Michael: And we hope you have a great day. Thanks a lot. Bye bye.
Kathryn: Bye.
