Monthly Archives: June 2018

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How to Make & Keep Your Message Relevant with Joe Calloway

Episode 58

There are new businesses, thought leaders, influencers, coaches, consultants, you name it coming onto the scene every single day. So, how you can stand out and make sure your business, and voice, is relevant in a crowded marketplace? This week’s guest is going to tell us exactly that!

Joe Calloway works with leaders to help make great companies even better. He is a business author and conducts interactive sessions with leaders on how they can better simplify, focus, and execute in their businesses. Joe is also a partner in The Disruption Lab; which is a consulting group that helps companies with innovation and transformation.

In this episode, Joe talks about differentiating yourself by creating genuine value for your clients or customers, why he believes his influence is greater in smaller settings, why he takes a collaborative approach to his work, why just being different from your competition isn’t enough, the simple way to get the marketplace to “beat a path to your door,” how simplifying something is more difficult that it being complicated, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Joe Calloway Voice of Influence Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Today, I have with me Joe Calloway. I’m so thrilled to have him because he works with leaders to help make great companies even better. He’s a business author and conducts interactive sessions with leaders on how they can better simplify, focus, and execute in their businesses.

Joe is also a partner in the Disruption Lab, which is a consulting group that helps companies with innovation and transformation. Oh, all these words that I love. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife, Annette and her daughters, Jessica, and Kate.

Joe, welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Joe Calloway: Hey, Andrea, thank you so much for having me!

Andrea: So what would you say is the core of the message that you have in your business with your voice of influence, what are you trying to get across to the world or to leaders?

Joe Calloway: Yeah, I think that if I boil it down, it would be about value, how differentiate about creating genuine value for your clients or customers. And with leaders, it’s how do they create value as being a place to work for their employees and then also how do you lift that team of employees so that the entire organization is creating value. That’s mostly, as you said in the introduction, I mostly work with leadership groups now, which I love doing. It’s funny, after doing this forever; I’m really having more fun now than I think I ever had.

Andrea: Why is that?

Joe Calloway: You know, I think I’m like a bowling ball that bounces around and finally gets in the grove. I think I’ve got my grove on. I’m doing a message that I enjoy and that message continually evolves and changes. It has to, because I’m talking with businesses and business changes all the time. I’ve also gone from, I used to give speeches, I mean I would give a speech to 10,000 people or 5,000 people and it was made you in all the talking and the spotlight was on me and I really got sick of it.

Oddly enough, I got bored with it. And now, I prefer to say, I do conversations. I work with much smaller groups and it’s very conversational and, to tell you the truth, I have more meaningful influence. So I’m having more fun. I’m working with groups that I love to work with and I’m doing it in a style, in a format that’s fun for me.

Andrea: Hmm, yeah. I love those smaller groups where you can really go back and forth. So you feel like your influence is greater in this smaller setting because why?

Joe Calloway: I think because it truly does lend itself to that word that you used which was conversation. The group I’m going to be working with tomorrow is about 60 people and it’s going to be a very much a roll-up your sleeves and I’ll talk then I’ll give them something to work on and then we will talk together about what they came up with.

Here’s the coolest thing that I’ve discovered, Andrea, I think I’d do my best to work and I give them the most value in terms of my ideas in what I’ve learned when I’m responding to something that they just said as opposed to me going on with my outline, which I do. But I kind of set the stage for the conversation and it’s in that conversation that I think I have the greatest impact.

Andrea: It sounds to me like you’re talking about a difference between content and insight. Because content, it seems like we can share that and then they have to go and apply it, but with insight you’re able to offer something that’s specific to them in their situation.

Joe Calloway: Yeah, it is that, and I’ll tell you something interesting about this speaking business, a lot of people start out and they really just kind of do and book reports. They’re talking about what other people have said or written, which is fine. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. And then a lot of times, the next day, you start digging out the information on your own. But sometimes where your career leads you, and this is where I’m think and hope I am now, is the people that I work with they’re saying, “Well, Joe, what do you think? What do you believe about this? What’s your opinion about this?

You know, it takes some years and some going around the truck a few times to build up the credibility to, I think, legitimately have that kind of bliss with credibility and I hope I have accomplished that. But it’s that give and take of “Here’s what I think, what do you guys think?” And tomorrow I’m going to be doing a lot of that. I’m going to be saying, “Look, everybody in this room an experienced leader, what do think in addition to what I think?” So I think the combination of those opinions and those insights gives all of us greater insight.

Andrea: Hmm love it! I know that you are all about this collaborative environment and I’m curious if that sort of always been an important thing to you, you know, this bringing value, creating value and doing it with this collaborative environment? Is it personal to you in any kind of way?

Joe Calloway: You know it’s interesting. It’s funny; I just made a short promotional video, just a couple of minutes about how I work. The word that I focused on was exactly the word that you just used, which was collaborative. And what I say is I’m very collaborative in the way that I work, not just in the decision itself but I’m very collaborative before the event or the meeting because I want to know what’s going on with them.

It doesn’t happen much anymore but every now and then _____ would say, “Joe, just come in and do your thing.” And I’m thinking, I don’t know what my thing is until I know what’s going on with you guys.” I have some sort of contexts so that this really has some meaning for you guys. Yeah, it’s personal in a couple of ways. One way that it’s personal is that I simply find it personally much more satisfying for me to make it about them. Because a lot of times, we’ve all set and listen to people and we’re thinking, “OK, this is interesting and this is all well and good.” But I don’t really see how it applies to me.

The reaction that I want because it’s more fun and, because duh, it’s good for my business, the reaction that I want is for them to be thinking, “My gosh, I can do what he’s talking about and it makes all the sense in the world for me to do that. So I’m gonna go tomorrow and start doing that.”

So I do try to make it personal in just that way of working, the really highly customized messaging. Andrea, it’s just more fun for me because I get bored if I do the same thing over and over. I’ve got a very low threshold for boredom. I think it’s a double edge sword. It’s a blessing and a curse. But anyway, it’s the way I’m wired. So yeah, I like to make the messaging as personally relevant, and that’s another I think key word, as relevant as I can possibly make it.

Andrea: OK, so we’re talking about differentiation and that’s a big piece of your message. What kind of suggestions or what approach do you have to differentiation?

Joe Calloway: There are a lot of people out there and a lot of businesses that are falling into a trap. You look at the root of the word differentiation and the root of it is different, and yet, I think it’s a mistake for people to sit down and say, “OK everybody, we’ve got to be different. We’ve got to be different in the competition and if we’re different then we’ll do better.” Look, everybody can put on a funny hat and that will make you different. The best different and the only different that matters is to be better.

If you got a restaurant, you can be different through some sort of gimmick but that’s going to wear off. But if you’re different because you’re better, because the food is better, because the value is better, because your service is better, you know, just go down the list. If you’re different because you’re better that’s the wisest thing. Oh my gosh, what was it? I cannot take credit for this. I read it on the website of some company, who I would love to credit them but I simply can’t remember who it was. But it said, bells and buzzers wear off, value never dies.

So for me, that’s not key, key, key point on differentiation. Look, in every aspect of everything that you do and how you serve your particular market, how can you be better? How can you improve on that?

Andrea: OK, so value meaning improving what you have and making sure that what you offer is something of value to the other person. I’m assuming that’s what you’re talking about.

Joe Calloway: Yeah, it is. I tell you what, in business today more and more that’s getting to the point. Here’s a question that I post to my clients a lot, I’d say, “Something’s gonna put you out of business in the next five years, maybe the next three years or maybe quicker than that. Something will put you out of business, meaning the way you exist today. Now the question is, is somebody else gonna put you out of business or are you gonna put you out of business?”

Andrea: Right.

Joe Calloway: By moving on to be the next thing that you need to be or the next iteration or the next state of evolution for your business so that you can better serve whoever your market is because the market changes all the time. I mean, it just constantly changes and we all have to get better.

So a lot of differentiation is rooted in, what do we need to change? What do we need to start doing that we’re not doing? What do we need to be better at that we’re already doing? And this could be the biggest one, what do we need to start doing? That’s a tough one, Andrea. It could be that you say, “Well, everything is working. I’m not gonna start doing anything,” and that’s a trap. You’ve got to be one step ahead and figure out how you need to change because if you don’t, the market is going to tell you and it may tell you in a very unpleasant way.

Andrea: So, let’s say you have a couple of, maybe three or four leaders in a room that they realize that they need to stay on top of this. But how did they decide which things to target or is there…

Joe Calloway: Great question. That’s a great, great question. Let me tell you, there are a lot of big companies _____, you mentioned the Disruption Lab that I’m a partner in, we’re working with some very big corporations. But what we’re doing is taking a couple of people and working with them in their assignment from their employers, from that corporation is you need to think like a startup. We need to have part of this company thinking very entrepreneurially.

And the nature of a startup is you say, “OK, here’s the product or service based on what you wanna do, what you think has value, or what you think people will pay for it.” Here’s the product or service that I’m going to set up and then you put it out there and guess what, the market is going to give you some information and you’re going to say, “Oops, I think maybe we need to change course.”

And maybe then you’ll need to change course again and again or maybe you need to say the market is telling us, they’re not interested in this. We need to start over. But the nature of starting something new, and you have to look at it this way, is it’s largely a learning process. Now, where do we find these areas of opportunity? Here’s a really good place to look, what can you make easier for people to do? What can you make easier for people to buy? Look, at least I have a couple of examples.

Andrea: I love this by the way.

Joe Calloway: Say that again?

Andrea: I love this, what can we do to make things easier.” Keep it going.

Joe Calloway: Think about this, why is Amazon such a name of success and such a master in the marketplace? Because they made it so easy to buy anything, I mean anything particularly an Amazon Prime member, which more and more people are all the time, you press one button and you own it. It’s getting to the point where pretty soon, you’ll press the button and in 10 minutes a drone will be outside your front door with whatever that you just bought.

OK, look at the company that everybody’s sites is being the poster company for disruption, Uber. What did Uber do? They made it easier to get a ride. So if you can figure out an easier, simpler way to do almost anything, the market place as the old saying goes will be a path to your door.

Andrea: Hmmm love that! OK, so I know another thing that you talked about, it’s kind of related to easier is simpler and simplifying, which you have very, very eloquently stated in videos and in your website things about how being complicated is easier than simplifying. So talk to us about these concepts.

Joe Calloway: Yeah, I think in the video on my website. I don’t know where this word comes from. But I said, any knuckle head can make something complicated which is true. Listen, I will have a room full of anybody, but certainly if I’ve got a room for the leaders, I’ll say this, I’ll say, “Raise your hand if you frequently have this thought that the audience you know I think were making this way more complicated than it needs to be.” And Andrea, every hand in the room goes up every single time. We all make it, meaning pretty much everything more complicated than it needs to be.

I challenged them by saying, “Look, if you’re a leader,” but really this applies to anybody, “but certainly if you’re a leader, I would challenge you that one of your core responsibilities is to simplify the complicated.” I’ll give you a great example. I was working with a nonprofit 30 years ago. They were wanting to rethink their purpose in how to go about creating more value to their marketplace as a nonprofit. Well, they had a three paragraphs statement of purpose. It was kind of a vision statement. Three paragraphs and the paragraphs were kind of long, this is here we are and this is what we do.

So I charged them with boiling that down to the absolute essence of what it meant? Now, this was a nonprofit that works with young women, with girls in all sorts of ways helping them better themselves. What they boiled that three paragraph statement down to was three words and the words were, We Empower Girls. And they were so fired up over tapping into that _____ that in months and months later they said, it’s the most empowering thing for ourselves that we ever did was to simplify that goofy, complicated mission vision purpose statement.

So yes, simplification is kind of like making it easy but that’s a great thing for anybody to do in their business. Well, I tell people, go back and simplify. They say, “Simplify what?” And my answer is “Everything, everything that you can possibly simplify, simplify it.”

Andrea: Here’s what I have gotten…I have had some frustrations with this area and I’ve seen this a lot in working with other people who were trying to simplify their messaging. That is just doing it down to those few words like you’re talking about without becoming too abstract or confusing.

Joe Calloway: Yeah, because you sure don’t want to be confusing. You know, the first mission I think in a lot of communication, and this applies to your employees, to your customers; is number one, they have to understand to what you’re talking about. They have to get it. My gosh, I looked at my own website, this was about four years ago and I just look at it through my hands up and I thought, “You can’t even tell what business I’m in from this thing. This is so convoluted, so abstract, and so complicated.”

I’ve kind of boiled it down to, for me, I can have three paragraphs describing what I did and I boiled it down to, “I help leaders make great companies even better.” That opens up a question, which is how do you that? How does that work? But that’s fine. On the front end, at least I w ant them to get that he works with leaders to make their companies better. They may not want that. I may not be a good match for them. That’s fine, that’s okay. I don’t want to be working with the wrong people and they don’t want to be working with me.

So you bring at such a great point. You bring at such a great point because if there’s not clarity and that you know when I talk about simplicity, the very next step in that is to create clarity and that leads to the next step, which is so that you can create focus on what matters most and what’s most important. The winners are not the people that do the most things, the winners are the people that do the most important things and do them extremely well and with great consistency.

Andrea: And they choose the most important things based on how they have simplified…I mean, how do they choose?

Joe Calloway: Yeah, I generally look at a couple of things. The things that are most important to me are the things that will help me create the greatest value for my clients coupled with that will help my business grow. And then the third element which is that is something that I want to do because listen, Andrea, I have been caught in the trap so many times.

I mean, this is classic because I’m constantly telling people not to do this and I was the guilty as one in the room. I’ll put it this way, don’t get stuck doing something that you’re really good at but that you don’t want to do. I have gotten stuck doing things that I did well and there was a market for it and I didn’t want to do it. It wasn’t fun. It didn’t make me happy but I was really good at it and it was making money. So I got caught in that dumbo trap and it’s hard. It’s hard to give up something that’s working.

Andrea: Oh definitely!

Joe Calloway: It’s taking me a long time but I’m starting to get the hang of it.

Andrea: And so the reason why you shouldn’t get stuck in it is?

Joe Calloway: Well, you know, a couple of things, you could get stuck in anything particularly today. You’re putting yourself at some point in the future, and probably the fairly near future, and this goes back what I was talking about earlier, if you get stuck in anything, you’re going to go out of business or your business is little by little going to go away.

The other thing is, and I’ll go back to the very personal _____ of it which is, I mean, come on, what’s worth paying the price of doing something that you can’t stand to do. Listen, I understand the real world, there are people that have jobs they don’t love. It drives me crazy when I hear people say, “Oh you have to be patient about your job. You have to love your job and if you don’t then you’re a loser.” Well, wait a minute. There are some people that have to support families and they got to have a job and it may not be the job of their dreams. Come on, that’s just real life and that’s about responsibility.

Having said that, I am a great proponent of doing whatever it is that you can do to bring fulfillment into your life and joy into your life anyway you can and for some people that means what they do after work, away from work. But certainly for an entrepreneur, for somebody that has their own business, come on, we’ve got a leeway to try things.

The trick is, it maybe something you want to do but there’s another part of the formula. Is there anybody willing to pay you to do it? And there a lot of people that say, “Well, all I have to do is be patient about what I’m doing and I’ll be a success.” Yeah, if there’s anybody that wants to pay you to do it, you will be but it could be you’re passionate about what you do and nobody has the least interest in giving you the credit cards for you to do it so that’s a problem. That’s an indication you might need to shift a little bit.

Andrea: So I’m still curious about the simplicity thing because I interviewed your friend, Colby Juvenville, in episode 51 and he and I were talking about how it’s hard for him to simplify or not necessarily simplify, because I might be talking about two different things, but I want to see how they fit together for you.

Joe Calloway: Sure!

Andrea: But I’m similar to him in that. It’s easy for me to get a lot of plates going and I kind of enjoy spinning plates. I kind of enjoy having a variety of things going on and going on in my head sometimes. But then, it does, I think, become a problem when it comes to trying to simplify the message about what is the market message or the brand message or whatever because of so many different things.

How do people who are kind of on that creative spectrum of, we’d like all over the place a little bit but at the same time there’s this necessary piece of needing to simplify in order to communicate and actually grow something?

Joe Calloway: Yeah a couple of everything, and number one, I saw that you interviewed Colby. Colby is great. I like Colby a lot. He’s a smart, smart guy and great of what he does. You’re talking to somebody who loves nothing more than the next idea. Oh my gosh, I’m like the classic. I’m like a dog, squirrel. I mean, I’ll have a great idea and I’ll start to execute it but then I look up and go, “Oh but here’s a new shiny idea over there and I wanna do that too.”

So for me simplification partly means discipline about understanding the difference between a true opportunity and a distraction. I would never advice anybody to not try new things. And if you are wired such that you love to have, as you said a lot of different plates spinning, great, do that. There are people that are at their most productive when they are doing it.

Go back to Amazon. Oh my gosh, Amazon is getting into healthcare. Amazon is going to be into everything eventually and yet, Amazon still has to have some sort of unifying vision that makes all of these pieces work together. And I go back to what Amazon does; everything that Amazon gets into, they get into it to make something simpler or to make something easier, to make it easier to buy stuff, or to make it simpler to access healthcare.

So you can have a lot of different things going on but you still have to simplify in your mind to the point that you can keep up with at all, that you can manage at all. As you said, and this is really important, simplify to the marketplace so that they get it what your brand is about. Because if they look at your brand and go, “I can’t figure out what she does, she’s all over the map.” That’s not good for business.

For me, I do a few different things but it’s all now around effective leadership. And so I try to simplify the value of proposition but my delivery system, the way I deliver that value can take any number of different forms.

Andrea: Oh I like that. So simplify the value of proposition in what you’re saying what you offer but you can offer it in many different ways.

Joe Calloway: Yeah, exactly!

Andrea: Yeah, I love that. Oh this is so good. I’m so happy that you’re here, Joe. And I am curious, if you were to take this conversation we’ve been having and pull out something that you really think that somebody who has or wants to have a voice of influence. They want to make their voice matter more for a cause or inside of their business as a leader or even as a speaker, consultant; what piece of influence or advice you have around how they can make their voice matter for today?

Joe Calloway: There are a number of things that comes to mind and I just go to, I mean I have to do that, Andrea. I’ve been in business a very long time. I’ve got to work on those elements that you’ve just sited all the time for me to stay in business because the business I’m in has gotten way more competitive over the last few years. A lot more people doing it now, and my competitors, I hear people say, “I’m so good. I don’t really have any competition.” I think, “Gosh, what’s life like in that planet because on my planet, I’ve got tons of competition and they’re so good.”

I mean, these leaders are so good at what they do. I have to constantly stay on top of it. So a couple of things about creating value and truly being a voice of influence and one of them is this is to be 100% you. You know it’s funny, I don’t do so much anymore but I used to work with executives on giving more effective presentations. The main thing I have to do with them was get them out of their heads about giving a speech.

And I would say, please don’t give a speech, don’t ever, ever, ever give a speech just talk to them. You’ve got something that you feel is important to say and if you don’t, you shouldn’t be up in front of them in the first place, but if you do have something to say that’s important just talk to them. You’re not supposed to be in a particular way. You’re supposed to be you, 100% you, because people sense that and if they sense that you are fully present and if it’s truly coming from your heart with what you’re telling them then you’re going to have more impact.

I do think there’s a lot to be said for what we’ve been talking about in terms of getting clarity yourself on what you’re core message is. I’m not saying, it needs to be just one thing but you’re core messaging. I’ll put it that way, because if we don’t have clarity on it then nobody else is going to have clarity on it. And another part is listening and listening on the front end.

I can’t do a presentation unless I feel like I have absolute clarity on who I’m talking to, what their concerns are and what’s _____ for them. I’ve been relate my message to that. It doesn’t mean that I write something brand new just to suit them. That strikes me as kind of faking it.

And here’s the other thing, sometimes I find out that I’m not the right match and I want to know that, because my gosh, any of us that have been in front of the audience and we got that realization of, “Uh uh, I really shouldn’t be in front of these people.” So I want to know on the front in, “Am I the right match and how can my message match up with their concerns? How can I be relevant in such a way that truly creates value?”

Andrea: Being relevant with and also being 100% you.

Joe Calloway: Yeah.

Andrea: Great, I love that! Well, thank you so much, Joe. I really appreciate you taking time to be with us today in sharing so much wisdom and so much inspiration for us as we move forward with our own voice of influence. Thank you for your voice in the world.

Joe Calloway: Well this is…can we go this again tomorrow?

Andrea: I love that.

Joe Calloway: This is fun. Thank you so much for having me. Listen, I don’t ever ask people to agree with me but I hope that what I say at least provokes a thought or two. If I’m a catalyst for people thinking about what they do and what they want to do and what they should do then I’m happy. I hope we were a catalyst at least.

Andrea: I’m sure. I know that that is the case so thank you so much!

 

 

END

 

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Stop Putting Yourself On the Backburner with Keri Stanley

Episode 57

When someone asks who you are, how often do you respond with your title? Wife, mother, physician, executive, etc. You’re more than just your title and this week’s guest wants to help remind you of that.

Keri Stanley is the CEO of Keri Stanley Coaching, Huffington Post Writer, and Inspirational Speaker who spends her life looking for the a-ha moments to share with her clients. She now hosts international experiences for healthcare and service-based professionals to Ground, Grow, & Give so they’re able to serve from a space of fulfillment rather than sacrifice.

In this episode, Keri talks about her journey of living a picture-perfect life while feeling lost and empty inside to now helping others prevent the same thing happening to them, how you can become more connected to yourself and those around you, the importance of letting go of some control and focusing on the positive “what if’s” instead of the negative ones, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

Today, I have with me, Keri Stanley, a sweet sweet, awesome, power-packed woman.  I’m so excited to share her with you!

She is the CEO of Keri Stanley Coaching.  She’s a Huffington Post writer and inspirational speaker who really spends her life looking for a-ha moments that she can share with her clients.  She enjoys the diversity of a worldwide client base, helping healthcare professionals learn how to fully connect, first to themselves and then to the rest of the world creating a really fulfilling life of meaning and impact, I’m excited to hear more about this in a minute.  She now hosts international experiences for healthcare and service based professionals so that they can Ground, Grow, & Give to be able to service from a space of fulfillment rather than sacrifice.

So, Keri, it is so great to have you here with us today on the Voice of Influence podcast!

Keri Stanley:  Oh Andrea, thank you so much.  I am honored and blessed to be here with you and I’m super excited to just have this conversation with you and to listeners.

Andrea:  Yes!  OK, so let’s start with…you’re really passionate about a lot of things.  If you could kind of distill it down to a core message or a main thing that you’re wanting to get across to the world with your voice of influence, what would that message be?

Keri Stanley:  Really that message would be that we all have a difference that we can make in this world and that we get to do that at the same time as we are taking care of other people.  And so, so often, we put ourselves on the back burners, so often we live our lives just fully in service to other people and then we’re kind left in the dust.

So my main message is that we can actually have both and do it in a way that tapped into the gifts that we have that we have meaning and impact in the world and that we get to take care of ourselves at the same time.

Andrea:  We have so much in common in that area for sure, so why does this matter to you?

Keri Stanley:  So yeah, just going back real quick, I am a single mom with two kids.  I have twins that are getting ready to turn 14 and I lived the life of a healthcare professional for a really long time.  I always knew that I wanted to help people or animals like that’s been a _____ since I was a little kid.  So the core of me is about helping other people.

So I lived my life based off of that and I lived my life in healthcare.  But what happened along the journey is that like I had everything from a picture perfect picture that from the outside looks great.  I had a successful career.  I had the marriage, the white picket fence, the kids, the whole nine yards, right?  But on the inside, I was completely lost.

I had days that I would look in the mirror and I’m like “I had no idea who I am anymore and how I exist in this world.”  I was feeling empty.  I was feeling used.  I was feeling abandoned.  I really didn’t know who I was anymore.  I didn’t feel like I was a good mom.  I would have days where I would just yell and scream at my kids and then I would feel awful.

I lived my life just in sacrifice of others, both in my profession and at home.  I didn’t understand the value of taking care of myself at that time and everybody else got _____ that.  So I ended up losing almost everything in my life.  My marriage fell apart.  I ended up losing my job.  I ended up, like all of these things that I was doing the right thing out there ended up costing me so much.

In that time, I stepped back and really started looking at like, is there a way to do life different?  Is there a way that it doesn’t need to be like this?  Is there a way that I can feel fulfilled that I can feel a really good mom and that I can make a difference in the world and like it all can work together?

I started seeing other people in life just in general that I was exposed to that they were making this happen.  I was like “If they can do this, why can’t I?”  So I started surrounding myself with people like that and I really started learning this value of understanding that you don’t have to give from a sacrifice state that you actually can give from a fulfilled state and starts with you.

So transforming my own life and even going back in the healthcare with a completely different shift and perspective, and now coaching individuals into how they can create this in their own life, my kids now see a truly happy mom on the inside and the out and they understand the value.  So not only am I doing that for myself but I’m actually teaching them on how to do that in their future as well as other individuals in the world.

We get to choose how we live this life but a lot of times, we’re just conditioned that we have to put all of our needs to the side.  And so learning how to shift that really makes the difference for both of you and the world.

Andrea:  So Keri, do you think that people get lost in that way that you were describing here a little bit ago?  I see it happen mostly with women but I think it happens with men as well at times, especially in that midlife kind of range when you’re starting to kind of question everything and ask what you’re really all about.  But how do you think that we end up really getting lost like that?  Does it have to do with the way that you’re talking about that living from this place of sacrifices instead of abundance, or what do you see there for that?

Keri Stanley:  Yeah.  I love your point about men because it is from women a lot.  But I do _____ with the fact that men go through the same thing, it’s just that that’s not talked about in the same way.  Women actually will talk about it more when they feel safe enough to share, when they get in an environment that they’re seeing other women in the same place.  Men tend to hold that inside way more than women do but they actually go through the same process of feeling lost and not having that identity.

So part of the things that I see, and I love that you talked about from sacrifice to abundance, that a lot of people actually don’t even know what the word abundance means.  That it’s just, again, we’re conditioned in how to live and we just kind of accept that as it is.  And you start saying things that just like “I’m just gonna survive this day,” or you start saying things like, “If I could just make it through this stage,” or “If I can just make it through to tomorrow,” or those types of things.

The other things is that we start identifying with our titles as who we are rather than remembering who we were as a _____ child that we have turned off through our life and we started accepting our worth is based off of our title at the time.

So whether we are a mom, whether we are an administrator, whether we are a wife, whether we are even single versus divorced versus whatever.  We just start identifying with these titles of that who we are.  If you ask anyone for the most part who they are, they’re going to start rattle off their titles.  The truth is that if you look at, look you and me for example, you are a mom just like I am, right?  You’re a woman just like I am but we may have all these similar titles but that the core of who we are, it’s actually very different, right?

We have so much in common but we have different gifts.  So who we are is really who we are as individuals and those are the pieces that we forget.  We forget our worth and actually who we are in the world and who we’re meant to be in the world because we’re just completely identified with a title, which means if you ever lose that title for some reason, a lot of people go into massive self doubt because they identify themselves completely by labels.

Andrea:  Right.  Yeah and then they don’t know who they are in the inside which is what really sustains the person through life and through hard times and through everything.

OK this is really cool, so what difference would it make in the world if people were to really embrace this idea that they can be more than their titles?  Yeah, what sort of difference would this actually make in a bigger sense, more than for just the individuals but also for the world in general, like what is your vision for this?

Keri Stanley:  Yeah, it makes such a difference in a way that we lived our lives and not only for ourselves but the impact that we have on the people that we touched on a daily basis.  So when you think about the people that you want to be around every single day, what do they have in common and what are the people that you don’t actually want to be around?

You know the difference in a person that is somebody that’s like really attracted in this magnetic way and they are people that like they have really good energy, they’re doing things in life.  They’re making a difference, like you just enjoy being around them.  So you get to choose to be one of those people.  The difference is the impact that you can make by just showing up in the world as you, like we’re always trying to be someone else.  So you get to be you, you get to bring your gifts to the world and when you’re authentically happy with your life, because 90% of people aren’t happy with their life.

If you ask people on a scale of 1to 10 how happy are you with your life, 90% of people are going to be less than five.  So you want to ask yourself, are you OK with that?  If you could actually make the changes to where you’re living a life that was, at least from the upper end if not closer to 10, what difference does that make for you as an individual, how you show up in your family as an individual, the impact that you actually feel like you can make in the world, it completely changes the entire perspective and your confidence in what you can achieve.

Because the reason that we don’t go out and do the things that we are actually meant to do and the reason that we’re here is because we don’t believe that we can.  So suddenly, when you allow yourself to step into that, you now see the world as possibility rather than, like “I’m just trying to survive.”  We were not mean to live on this earth in a way that we are just supposed to make it through the day.  That’s not at all why we were sent here, right?

So once you adapt to this lifestyle of living on purpose, living while you were here, taking care of yourself so that you can actually take better care of others then in some way you have a reason to be here rather than just making it through the day.

Andrea:  You know what I really like about what you just said is that you’re not saying that people need to totally change all the circumstances in their lives.  I understand that that could be a part of that, you might need to change your job or you might need to you know whatever, but you’re also talking about this internal shift that actually changes the way you approach your current circumstances.

Keri Stanley:  Absolutely, and to remember that you are not your circumstances.  So we like to go into blame, complain, and justify all the reasons that we are where we are.  So our circumstances are simply that that’s our circumstances.  We still get to choose how we want to create our life and how we want to live our life regardless of our circumstances.

As a matter of fact, your circumstances actually maybe a gift or something that you are learning so that you can do the next thing, but if you’re not connected to you and you’re not connected spiritually and you’re not connected to people, because we live a very disconnected life.  We’re very connected to technology that we’re very disconnected from all the things that are out there even the opportunities, the messages, all of that.

The people that are the most important in our life, a lot of times, they’re the most disconnected because we’re so focused on our _____.  So when you can step back from that and actually grasp the magic of the everyday life and the miracles that are happening all around you then you actually get to even enjoy the circumstances that you’re in with entire different set of lenses.

Andrea:  OK, Keri, when you’re just talking about this connectedness and how we’re disconnected, but what is it look like to be connected or how does one…you know if you feel disconnected in either areas of your life or just totally in general, what is it look like for somebody to actually become more connected in these ways that you’re just talking about?

Keri Stanley:  I truly feel that once people get so much more connected, because it’s a rhythm, right?  We go in and out of being connected versus disconnected.  It’s not a 24/7 am I connected but the goal is to be more connected on a much more regular basis.  So first of all when you’re connected to yourself, when you’re truly connected, there is the peace and a calm that you can even achieve in the midst of a storm because you are moving through it and there’s a light that happens to where people actually, like I said that actually want to be around you.

So there’s a different energy that you carry as you are going throughout life.  Mo most people are looking for this peace and fulfillment factor and so you actually can feel that peace within because so often we’re trying to get back from someone else.  So imagine being able to just create that regardless of what’s going on in your world within yourself.

And then when you are connected from a spiritual standpoint whatever that looks like for you, but when you’re connected from that spiritual standpoint, there is always a message, there’s always an answer, there is always something of what my next step gets to be when we allow ourselves to be supported.  Especially, we as women think like, I have to do this on my own _____ always have to be on my own.  And so create this on my own-ness and when we can learn to receive from others and from just the universe God whatever that maybe _____ in life doesn’t have to be so hard and lonely.

So that connection in and of itself allows you to feel primarily supported in life and you’re not ever doing it on your own or alone.  Those connections are critical in living a life but then it allows you to be truly, truly, truly connected in your relationships and that includes with your kids that includes with your spouse or your partner, relationships with your friends.

It could go on such a deeper level because how often do you pass by someone and just have a conversation that’s a fly by, right?  And we don’t actually get into real conversations.  So that is partly just because we are disconnected, which also doesn’t _____ to make a true difference.

Andrea:  Yeah, I cannot think of it too and so like the connectedness, it’s centeredness.  There’s something about that point when you feel like that calm that you’re describing that you realized how distracted you’ve been in these other conversations with other people or whatever.  That’s definitely been my experience as well and that’s been the kind of grand scheme of things, like I used to feel super distracted and that’s been decreasing overtime but it’s also been a cycle like you talked about.

You kind of go in and out of this feeling distracted, feeling the angst and that sort of thing and then kind of coming back to that center or connected place where you _____.  It’s just so distracting and I think that for me, this is something that I’ve been thinking for myself recently so maybe you have some thoughts on this, but I have felt an increasing amount of peace around what I’m doing.  I think when you’re creative or when you’re on a mission whatever, you can get in that hassle mode.  You can get in that mode of like “I gotta get a stuff done.  I gotta figure this out, I gotta figure this out.”

We actually talked about this recently where I was just like so like you said “You’re just so in your head right now, Andrea.”  And I was like “I know, but I don’t know how to get out of it in this moment,” because I was feeling this angst and I think that this angst to find and to kind of come to a conclusion about something is something that I’ve adapted as part of my identity like I have to feel angst or something.

Recently, I’ve been feeling less of that.  I’ve been feeling like “Why do I need to feel that way?  Why I’m always saying, I don’t know when I actually do know?”  So when people ask me a question about what you do or what you’re thinking or that sort of thing, I’d answer with, “I don’t know.  I don’t know.”  I’d get so lost in my head like you’re talking about.

So what is that looks like for somebody like what were you trying to help me do in that moment when you said, “Andrea, you’re so in your head?”

Keri Stanley:  There are two words that comes to mind as I’m talking to you right now and I remember this conversation because how often do we all get into that space because we’re doubting.  We’re doubting our value, we’re doubting that we can have the answers, and we’re doubting that it’s going to be okay because there’s this need for control.  So most of us have gotten to a point that we’re living life on the defensive, we’re trying to protect as _____, right?  We’re trying to protect.

So we’re living in life to where we’re trying to make sure that nothing bad is going to happen.   We’re trying to make sure everything is taken care of and we lived this life with control.  So when we do that, we lose sight of letting go to surrender and trust.  So those are the two words that as you’re asking me that and I have so many clients that there is their biggest thing is learning to let go of control because that’s really, really scary and that’s back to the “I’m the one that has to do it so I’m the one that has to figure it out.”

When you surrender and you let go and you actually trust that it’s all going to work out, that I actually already have the answers or they’re coming in perfect timing then the pressure gets to be released and I actually get the opportunity to be and enjoy my life.  And that’s a very scary thing even getting connected for most people because we live so distracted lives.  It’s a resistance and a way for us to protect ourselves from getting connected.

We use “busy” as this shield of our badge of honor because actually most people are scared to have stillness because they’re afraid of what they might find out and they know they’re lost but they’re afraid of what they’re going to find out as they go along with their journey and so in their minds that’s all what ifs that could be bad.

So what I challenge everybody that I work with is, what about all the what ifs that are amazing and that you get to experience by going on this journey.  I’ve seen time and time again; executives, VPs, moms, or physicians, that when they start letting go of all the control they’ve been holding so tightly to, which is actually just an illusion and it takes so much energy, that when they start letting go of that and the allow themselves to be supported that life actually gets easier and they’re amazed of how quickly things can happen in their life.

Andrea:  Love it.  Yes, awesome.  OK, I want to get into what you’re doing now because I didn’t come from a healthcare family but I married into one, so I have a big heart for them, for healthcare providers and you are now providing a means of support and vision for them.  I would like you to talk to us about your program first of all and then we can _____ out a little bit as far as why and that sort of thing, so what is the program?

Keri Stanley:  So the newest program that I’m launching, because I ran international retreats across the globe, some of just for women, some are for men and women together that anyone can come to, and the entire purpose of them is to ground, grow, and give.  When we talked this idea of surrender and that messages get delivered to you, I really got this clear message on a run because I’m a runner and I do that for my own self-care and I also do that for my own mental stability.  It really helps me from that standpoint but at the same time it’s when I can get those messages come through.

So this one was a very clear message that one of the gifts that I have is teaching people how to get grounded in their lives so that they can hear better, because we’re blocking that on a regular basis, because it’s disconnected and living from the state of fulfillment.  So allowing individuals to go on a retreat experience where they get to get grounded both in their own like who they are.  They get to get grounded in being disconnected from the day-to-day and actually just getting connected in life and getting connected in what really matters because how often are we focused on doesn’t matter that we think of.  But once we get quiet, we realized it doesn’t.

Then we have opportunity to grow which is getting out of our comfort zone, getting out of our routine, getting into a space where you’re connecting with other people, connecting with other cultures.  And then finally the last piece, and especially with healthcare providers and professionals just in general, is that after a while you give so much that you almost become resentful.

And we will love our jobs, and I’ve been there, we will love our jobs and we give and give and give but at the end of the day, if you go home exhausted day in and day out and not doing any kind of self-care, you start getting resentful whether it’s even to your kids or to your husband or whoever it may be, it starts appearing in life and you’re just not enjoying life as much as you could which also translates into how you serve.

So being able to really take the time to recharge and refuel yourself in a completely different place where you disconnected and reconnected to you, allows us to give to an environment wherever we may be, for example in Peru we’ll be with the farmers of Peru that we get to connect with the actual people that don’t see the _____ on a regular basis.  We go into the villages and get connected to the heart of the people and are able to give back in this beautiful sacred way that you really feel like you’re giving from a fulfilled state that then in turn can fill you backup.

Andrea:  That’s an interesting concept.  I’d like to hear about this giving from this fulfilled state because I end up feeling being resentful.  I think that you’ve totally hit it on the head that people who are here to help others or in professionals in general, like you said, I think that sometimes we feel like we’re serving someone else even our boss or the company at large or whatever and it can totally turn into that feeling of resentment.

So how does this resentment change because of giving?  How does that shift happen in a person, is it because you’re getting more connected and you’ve already grounded and now you’re growing?  What would you say as happening in a person when they shift from feeling resentful to a place of willingness and ability to give so much?

Keri Stanley:  Yeah, you know there’s that thing out there that you can’t pour from an empty cup and how often are we trying to do that on a regular basis even your gas tank in your car that you would panic if it was getting ready to run out of gas, right?  You might let it get all the way down to _____ but you’re going to make sure that you stop and you refill it backup.

We run our body and our physical lives on a regular basis not only with the low-fuel light but also with the maintenance light and every other light on and we just keep going.  We would never do that for other things in our life but we do it for ourselves.  So a car can’t keep going unless you stop and refill it and at a certain point like it’s just done, right?

So when we can take our perspective for ourselves to understand that if we would take the time to fill back our tank, if we would take the time to do some maintenance, if we would take the time to _____ some of those things like we actually function on such a better state and can go further.  We just have been taught that we’re not supposed to.  We actually don’t even know what it feels like to truly be able to be fulfilled in a giving state.

So yes, once you get grounded _____ and to be able to give then that process allows you to give in a way that is truly heart centered.  We talked about this idea that am I giving to give or am I giving to get?  At some point, you’re expecting or wanting somebody to say something to you like a thank you or something and that’s actually giving to get but that’s the state that we get into.  Once we realize that if we are constantly in a filled upstate or we understand how we can fill our cup back up that we actually don’t need those things and it doesn’t have to take this really long time.

I mean, I was just _____ in San Diego last week and in 24 hours there was a group of us, that even in our off hours of a training that we were in, we ran a project and we raised over $14,000 in less than 12 hours essentially overnight in the off hours and fed over 325 homeless people on the streets.  And actually deeply connected with them on the streets and gave them flowers and gave them food and heard their stories and gave them love and gave them hugs and literally just connected with them, you know talk about you’re not your circumstances, really just connected with them as human beings, because how often _____ at something?

So you can create that giving experience from a fulfilled state very quickly once you learn how to do it, it just that most people don’t even remember, like it’s been so long that they’ve given themselves as a break.  It’s been so long since they’ve allowed themselves.  There’s a lot of guilt that comes from “if I take time for myself.”  But once you realize, “I’m a better mom.  I’m a better caregiver, I’m a better physician.  I’m a better administrator.  I’m just a better person in the world,” and that makes the difference in everything.

Andrea:  I think it’s huge and it also…you know all that energy that we waste on that angst, on that desire to control and that grip that we try to have on life that we can even really ever really grip.  It’s such a waste of time and energy and when you’re not doing that, gosh you have so much more.  I think we forget how much we actually really have because of that, so I love that.  I love what you’re doing.

OK, so what would something that you would want the influencer listening to remember about themselves and their own influence in the world?  What something that you can give them to take home and say, “I’m gonna remember this this week.”

Keri Stanley:  So they always say on a plane to put your oxygen mask on yourself first.  Most of us in life don’t actually understand that concept nor do we do that, but if we don’t save ourselves, and we have a choice in life to save ourselves and actually choose living, ____ exist.  But once you choose living and you choose to save yourself, you actually get the opportunity to make a difference in so many more lives than you ever would if you choose not to give yourself that oxygen.

Andrea:  Hmmm yeah.  OK so what’s the challenge?  What challenge do you leave us with then Keri?

Keri Stanley:  My challenge to you is for all of you listening is find one thing.  It’s so common that I’ll ask my clients and those who come my retreat, I will ask them what’s one thing that truly makes you happy that you really love to do.  And most people have forgotten, they’re like “I don’t even know what that means anymore.”  So my challenge to you is find one thing that maybe you’ve enjoyed as a kid or find one thing that truly is something that just makes you feel excited about life again.

Maybe you love to dance, maybe you love to play tennis, or maybe you love to be in a drama like you love to doing the acting piece, whatever it is.  There’s something out there that you forgotten that you love to do and allow yourself to step back into that and even feel like a little kid again because that child in you still exists and that when you tune into there is where the magic happens.

Andrea:  Hmmm love it.  OK Keri, how can people find you?  What should they do to find you, your program or you as a coach, whatever?  Where should they find you?

Keri Stanley:  You can find me on Facebook that’s probably where I’ve been most active.  I do video every single morning and it’s Keri Stanley and Keri Stanley Coaching that I’m on there for both pages.  So either one, you can find me.  I’m extremely active on there and always giving tips every single day and my retreat and everything on there as well.  You can also find me, my website is www.keristanley.com and all of my retreats are on there.

I’ve got the next, Ground, Grow, & Give is coming up in September and October and then there’s a ____ specifically for women in Costa Rica in November so those are the two big ones that are coming up.  My challenge is just to continue taking care of yourself and enjoying every day because each and every day is a miracle.

Andrea:  Thank you so much, Keri!  Thank you for your voice of influence in the world and the way that you’re impacting people.  I appreciate it!

Keri Stanley:  Awesome!  Thank you so much for having me, Andrea, I truly enjoyed _____.

Andrea:  And I’ll be sure to link everything in the show notes.  Alright, thank you so much!

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Find Authentic Confidence in Alcohol-Free Living with Kate Bee

Episode 56

How often do we see memes on Facebook about it being “wine o’clock” or how often do we hear references in pop culture about how alcohol is the answer to a stressful day or the perfect way to celebrate a special occasion? Today’s guest has made it her mission to change this narrative.

Kate Bee is the founder of The Sober School; where she coaches women through early sobriety and helps them navigate alcohol-free living without feeling deprived or miserable.

In this episode, Kate talks about her own journey with sobriety, her mission of trying to change the narrative around sobriety, why she tries to work with people before they’ve hit rock bottom, her tip for handling a situation where others are pressuring you to drink with them, what helps her publish her content even when she has doubts or insecurities, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Kate Bee Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

Today, I have with me my Kate Bee, Kate who lives in Manchester in the United Kingdom.  I’m so excited to have you and we were able to connect on this, Kate.

Kate is the founder of the Sober School where she coaches women through early sobriety and help them navigate alcohol-free living without feeling deprived or miserable, which I think is just a really interesting topic, so I’m excited to hear more about that.  And Kate, how you got into it?

So welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast, Kate!

Kate Bee:  Thank you so much.  Thank you for having me and it’s nice to talk to you.

Andrea:  Yes.  We were just discussing before we started the recording that it’s been a year in a half since we meet at Amy Porterfield’s live events in San Diego.

Kate Bee:  Yeah.  I know that was so cool.  That was such a big deal for me at the time going all the way, leaving rainy England going to sunny San Diego.  But yeah, I met lots of great people at that event including your good self, so it’s nice to catch up.

Andrea:  So Kate, could you share with the audience just a little bit more about what it is that your program is and what you’re doing right now?

Kate Bate:  Sure!  So yeah, I help women who are drinking too much to stop drinking and actually feel good about it.  So rather than feeling like it’s the end of the world and it’s an awful thing that they got no choice in, I try and inspire people and show them that alcohol-free living can actually feel really good and just be a really positive way of life.

So I’ve got a 6-week online course which I run a few times a year and I gather together a big group of women and everybody starts the course on the same day.  So you kind of get to be part of this tribe who are all going through this exact same experience.

It guides people through their first six weeks of early sobriety and really helps set them up either for an alcohol-free lifestyle or guide them through a break, because lots of people are kind of dip in their toes in the water and just want to see what it feels like to stop drinking.  Wine can make you feel really rubbish and it’s good to take a break and do it with a support of a group around you.

Andrea:  You know, this topic, when I was first introduced to you, Kate, it really intrigued me because actually I spent some time working with some folks in a recovery counseling center, not as a counselor per se, but more as like  a minister or chaplain kind of voice in that setting.  So in that setting, it felt like people were sort at the bottom of the barrel in their lives.  They just were sort hit that rock bottom and they were going through rehab really or a 12-step program.

It sounds to me like what you’re talking about here is not necessarily that 12-step program kind of thing but a little less intense.  How would you fit it into the scheme of you know, the landscape of the sort of program?

Kate Bee:  Yeah that’s a great point because one of the things I try to do is to work with people before they hits any kind of rock bottom and that’s a big part of my message is that, if alcohol is making you feel at all unhappy and miserable then you can stop and you can change that path.  You don’t have to wait until you are in rehab or you have lost your job or, you know, any of this other kind of stereotypical things that we associate with people when they really do go a bit further down that downward spiral.

So I tend to work with women who are, to the outside world, perfectly fine.  They are holding down good jobs.  They got busy lives.  Generally they got kids and you know, they make everything happens.  They get the kids to school.  They go to work.  They do good job.  They put a meal on the table at the end of the day.  Their lives to the outside world seem to be on track but they are feeling more and more rundown by the amount of alcohol that they are drinking.  I tend to deal with people just _____ who had years and years thinking that wine, beer, or whatever it is is a thing that keeping their lives together.  And now they’re just starting to think, “Actually, I think this is what is making my life so hard enough _____.”

So yeah, it is about showing people that you can stop drinking before things get really, really bad, just in the same way that you can stop using any of the drugs.  You can stop smoking before you get some kind of lung disease.  So a big part of my work is trying to change the narrative around sobriety and making it less of something that you have to do when all other options are being exhausted as a kind of punishment and more a conscious choice that you can make any time.

Andrea:  Yeah.  That’s really encouraging.  I think that a lot of people who have a message, we struggle to figure out exactly what that niche is.  And it sounds to me like you’re not necessarily saying; everybody should stop drinking, even though it might something that’s inside of you a desire to see.  You’re also not saying, if you’re at the rock bottom.  You’re speaking specifically to a certain kind of person.  From what I understand, you have a personal connection to that person, is that right?

Kate Bee:  Yeah, definitely.  I was inspired to start with the Sober School after going through something like this myself.  I was never a rock bottom alcoholic.  I was that person, you know, I showed up to work every day.  I kept things together.  The most common reaction I got when I stopped drinking with people would say to me, “But I didn’t know you had a problem.  Are you sure you need to stop drinking?”

So I was really good at hiding how alcohol affected me.  And yeah, I don’t have any dramatic stories of waking up in hospital or getting into trouble at work or anything like that.  But I was like many women.  I started drinking at a young age because it made me feel more confident.  It made me be the kind of teenager and young person that I wished I was.  You’re better at partying, better talking to boys, better at everything and then it just slowly moved from my best friend into my worst enemy.  It didn’t seem to _____ whether I had a good day or bad day whether I cheer myself up or celebrating something, I was always just drinking a bit too much and waking up feeling hang over and feeling awful.

But my problem was that when I look for help and this is kind of…I’ve only started looking for help back in 2009, 2010 and it was a while I stopped drinking in 2013.  When I was looking for help, I couldn’t find anything that applied to me.  It all seemed so extreme and it was talking about people going to rehab or going to meetings or you know talking about a kind of level of addiction that I wasn’t experiencing.  But yeah, I knew in my gut that alcohol wasn’t doing me any good at all.

So yeah, I’m really pleased I kind of took a leap of faith and did decide to quit.  Yeah, I’ve been really passionate since then about kind of saying to people; there is this middle ground between being a normal drinker and being alcoholic.  There are many shades of grey in between and it’s trying to get off the bus a bit earlier if you want to.

Andrea:  So why do you think that people need or want a program like yours, you know, that something that has some guidance to it and it sounds like some community as well.  Why do you think that people need that and don’t just…

Kate Bee:  Don’t just stop drinking?

Andrea:  Yeah.

Kate Bee:  I think it’s really because alcohol is in everything we do.  I mean, obviously, I live in England where we are particularly big drinkers.  I went with women all over the world, lots of women in the U.S. and some in Australia as well and whatever we’ve agreed on is that we seemed to be living in this very busy world while we are encouraged and it’s cool to drink on your birthday, on a wedding, on a debut’s party, or a funeral.  You think if any kind of event or gathering and the chances are this will be involved in some way.

If you’re on Facebook, the chances are you see Facebook, means all the time about Wine O’ Clock, Mommy Juice and all the stuff, because if there’s problem in life can be solve by drinking alcohol.  It’s very difficult to change your behavior when you are surrounded by those kinds of messages.  It’s cool to be sober, but also it’s not cool to be the person who can’t control their drinking.  You’re really stuck in that environment.

So one of feedback I got most from the women I work with is “Wow, I had no idea other people felt like this, because people feels so alone and they think they’re they only people who are struggling in this way.”  So yeah, it’s a funny old world really and it’s hard to stop drinking.  I often compare this actually to smoking.  I don’t know what it’s like where you are but here, smoking is not cool anymore.  Things have really changed in terms of smoking.

But I can remember not that long ago when I was at school, smoking was still a bit cool and actually I had a bit of a hard time because I don’t really like smoking.  And I think we’re still stuck in that when it comes to drinking.  We’re still pressuring people to drink and be cool and we’re questioning them when they don’t drink, which is kind of crazy.

Andrea:  Do you get that a lot.  I mean, maybe not so much now but when you first were deciding to be sober and you were out and about, did you get a lot of questions and looks and things like that?

Kate Bee:  Huh yes, absolutely!  Yeah, it’s like I have to justify myself choosing not to consume this drug, not to drink and people just can’t understand it.  I think sometimes people; they’re coming at you from a place where, perhaps they feel a little bit self-conscious about their drinking or they prefer drinking in a group and it’s a bit odd when someone changes their behavior.  Yeah, I used to get a lot of questions about it, but fortunately, now I’ve gone so far the other way, people know just _____.

Andrea:  Do you think that people feel like you’re judging them by not participating with them.  I mean, have you heard that kind of feedback or did you get that sense at all and how do you navigate that?

Kate Bee:  Yeah.  No one said that explicitly but I think that is what behind…I think that is what people feeling when they’re saying “Oh come on, come on, just have one, just join in.”  They do _____ a bit judged.  My tip for navigating that situation is always to be extremely positive _____ how you’re feeling inside.  Make it clear that you’re just taking a break from drinking or taking some time off and you’re loving it.  You’re feeling really good.  You’re really surprised how much you’re enjoying it and you’re very happy for everyone else to drink.  You’re still going to be the life and soul of the party, nothing else has changed.  Own that conversation and be really positive about it and don’t let people push you into drinking.  I would always _____ first to say that sometimes I’ve seen people bullied other people into drinking.

Andrea:  Yeah that’s probably true. You know, I was thinking about the…oh gosh, I had this thought in my head and so I’m going to add this out.  So one of the things that I hear from people and I’ve noticed is that people do seem to feel more comfortable when they have a drink in their hands and yet, you just said something about, you know, telling them that nothing’s going to change, they’re still going to be the life of the party.  Do you find that the people that come through at the Sober School that they actually are able to still tap into that person that they were like when they were drinking in the positive sense you know being more outgoing perhaps or comfortable.  Is that part of what you talked about or how do you know how they’re able to handle that?

Kate Bee:  It’s the big part of what we talked about.  First of all, people do feel more comfortable with drink in their hands.  I feel more comfortable with the drink in my hands in an alcohol-free drink.  So I say to people, get a drink and just because you’re not drinking alcohol doesn’t mean you should be empty-handed, doesn’t mean you should be drinking water or something boring, get a nice drink.  But a big thing we do on the course is to really analyze what is you think alcohol is providing for you because a lot of people fall into these habits where they think that alcohol is what is making the party fun or alcohol is what’s making them sociable and having a good time.

So we go through some exercises while we look at parties where you have perhaps not had a good time, where you have actually felt pretty bored or stuck for things to say even though you’ve been drinking loads and loads and loads.  So yeah, how does that workout?  If alcohol is the magic fun in a glass party juice type _____ then it should work every time.  We talked a bit about, you know, if you’re going to events that you can only enjoy by getting drunk with them, should you be going to these events anyway?

We’re not around for long.  We’ve got one shot at this life, we should be living it to the max in doing stuff that we genuinely enjoy creating.  A life that really is fun, not one that we have to kind of bumble through slightly drunk in order to stomach certain things, so yeah, it is an adjustment.  I’m not going to lie about that.  It feels a bit a lot you’ve lost a comfort blanket at the beginning.

But when you start really analyzing these thoughts rationally, you can get to a place where you go to a party and you do feel like your best self because you know you are.  You’re showing up.  You’re clear-headed.  You’re not going to be the boring person who’s saying the same old anecdote five times because you’re slightly drunk and you can’t remember that you said it already.  You’re going to be a good company.

Andrea:  Yeah, I like that.  OK, so Kate, I know that as with anybody who is sharing something, sharing a passionate message that they have, our voices kind of shift, morph, or mature become even sometimes more powerful.  Do you think that over the past few years that you’ve been doing this, have you felt a shift in your own voice as you’ve spoken about this, as you’ve executed the Sober School and talked to more and more people about your message?

Kate Bee:  Yeah.  I’ve been thinking about this ahead of knowing that I was going to speak to you and just kind of reflecting on how things have changed because I really think, “Yeah, things have really changed so much over the past few years.”  When I first started out, I felt very unsure of myself and _____ I would think the most often is, “Who do you think you are writing this blog, giving people this advice?  What are you doing?”  I would have these massive doubts, so unsure of myself.  I think it’s only _____ as my blog has grown and I’ve had more people follow that and really resonate with it and tell me that they like what I was saying that I became more confident and I think I will say I’ve become more confident in my own style and my own approach.

I used to get worried about offending people who had slightly different opinions on alcoholism or the best way to go about things and then I realized that that’s OK.  Actually, there is something to be said for certain people who just don’t resonate with your message rather than trying to be, you know, wanting to all people.  It is better to _____ down effectively and have your beliefs and answers stick with them.  So yeah, I feel like it’s been a long, long journey and I still have plenty of doubts now.

Andrea:  Especially when you’re first starting, but even now if you’re still having doubts at times.  What gets you passed those to actually press publish on your blog post or on your social media pages or whatever, why do you keep doing it or why did you have the courage even when you didn’t have the feedback yet?

Kate Bee:  Well, yeah.  I guess I’ve been held out slightly on that.  Before I started the Sober School, I did have another blog just on WordPress.  A kind of free WordPress and I do _____ experimented with my own voice and I I have _____ idea what resonates to the people.  I’d have some really positive feedback from people through writing that blog.  They said to me like, “I just like hearing what you’re doing and your emails always seem to come at the right time.”

So I think that gave me that confident to really go for it and think, “Well, if I helped five people with that blog, perhaps if I do my Sober School blog and work consistently and be really kind of establish myself there, I can help more people.”  That’s the thing I still come back to each today.

Every time, I write a blog, I always get an email from someone saying, “Huh, this came at just the right time.”  So I think, “OK, I helped one person.”  I think that’s what makes me keep going.  It’s a bit late in a day here in the UK, I just had a day of really struggling to write a blog post, so yes that would be one of those that I think, “OK, you got to stop worrying about this,  press publish.”

Andrea:  What kinds of things are still hard to publish?

Kate Bee:  I think probably about things that has more to do with me personally.  When I started off on this journey, I used to share a lot about me on my drinking, on my experiences.  But as more people have found out about the Sober School and my auntie knows and my cousins _____ from my mom, I sometimes really get self-conscious about the things that I’m writing, whereas, I didn’t use to think about that before.

I used to just write and I’ve been thinking about my ideal customers or readers.  I just been thinking about that and I published it with them in mind.  So something I really have to work on is that self-conscious kind of…what do you call it?  That voice that kind of saying, “Ohh do you wanna say this?”  Maybe it will come from the same place, the self-doubt, they just have a different _____ now, but yeah, sharing personal stuff is still quite a big deal for me.

Andrea:  It can put you in the line of judgment, it sounds like.

Kate Bee:  Yeah, yeah definitely because there are some parts of the recovery community online who are quite vocal about why you shouldn’t do this or you should do this.  And yeah then there are other people in my real life, who I always think “Oh what are they really thinking about me?”  I’m coming across like a very paranoid person and I’m not.

Andrea:  Well, now, you’ve come so far.  It’s clear that this is a small piece of it but it stills something that everybody deals with I think and so that’s why I asked.

Kate Bee:  Yeah, yeah.  I do feel _____ when I hear about other, you know, people who have much bigger businesses, like I’ve heard Marie Forleo and Amy Porterfield talked about self-doubt as well.  So that’s what makes me feel better.

Andrea:  Most definitely.  Yeah, the idea that somebody else could pull back or you know cast some sort of judgment on us, I think is definitely one of those things that is ever present and yet what’s telling is that you keep pressing publish.  There’s still that you care more about the message of the people that need it than you know…I call it a sacrifice.  It’s essentially saying, “You know, I’m willing to put myself on the line for this message.”  So every time you end up pushing publish, you’re just reinforcing that passion inside of you that really, that willingness to put yourself on the line for others and I think it’s a really beautiful thing.

Kate Bee:  Oh, thank you.  I appreciate that.  I used to be a reporter and a journalist before this, so I think I do still have something engrained in me that whatever happens, you have to meet the deadline and you have to publish something.

Andrea:  There you go!  I like that.  This is still along the same line of feeling a little unsettled about sharing _____ but it seems like when we talked a year and a half ago, you weren’t sure how much of that you wanted to put out there and then it continued to morph and no here you are.  I love that you’ve gotten on camera, on social media and you keep sharing ideas.  I feel like what you do is you give people that opportunity to say, “Oh, I don’t have to live like this.”  But you’re the face of that.

Kate Bee:  Yeah.  I mean, you must feel the same way; you’re the face of your business.  It’s estranged.  Yes, I am the face of my business and I have tried to be a bit more visible because my comfort zone is definitely in writing that’s what I feel comes to me most naturally.  But I will _____ from the point of view being a follower of other people.  The videos and podcasts connect with people in a way that sometimes wisdom words don’t.  So I have been trying to push myself out there and do more videos.  Sometimes I do free workshops and _____ videos.  Other times, it’s more “Hey, I’m in this place.  I’m full of these things that I want to say and let’s talk about what’s relevant here.”  But yeah, getting my face on screen is a goal for me, to do more of that this year for sure.

Andrea:  Do you do any speaking like live events?

Kate Bee:  No, I’ve never done anything actually.  That’s kind of thing that will give me sleepless nights.  I know you do that but no.

Andrea:  It’s not something that you want to do.  I understand.  If you don’t mind, I know that you took that Fascinate Assessment…

Kate Bee:  Uh-huh.

Andrea:  And you came out with your top two languages being Mystique and Passion, which is one of the most rare combinations, because mystique is about not wanting to share a lot about yourself and passion is about sharing and connecting with people.

Kate Bee:  Oh my goodness.

Andrea:  Isn’t that interesting?

Kate Bee:  I do know somebody else who is a Mystique plus Passion too, and there is this sense of depth like you exude a sense of depth and also desiring to connect and listen to other people.  So I think that it’s just your voice.  It does have a very reflective sound to it not just in a way that you in a tone that you’re speaking with but also just how you process things.  I can see how that would be such a struggle too, the desire to share but the desire to want to put the focus on other people instead of yourself.  It makes a lot of sense.

Kate Bee:  Yeah and perhaps you can help me with something because I went to a conference earlier this year.  I went back to San Diego where we met and I went to lots of different lectures.  It was for entrepreneurs in growing your business, and the last event I went to on a final day was about writing a book and becoming a self-published author.  I’ve always wanted to do something around what I do now and write about alcohol-free living.  So on a whim, I purchased this self publishing course and some sessions with a writing coach.  I paid the money _____, but I got this book commitment coming up.

As the deadline coming closer, I’m thinking..I don’t know if I can share enough with my personal story to make this book what it needs to be.  You wrote your book and what would be your advice for me given that I’m so conflicted?

Andrea:  Yes.  Well, I understand because that was not my intention when I started to write my book.  I was intending to share a little bit of pieces but not anything extensive and I ended up writing…my writing coach actually coached me and ended up finding the voice of my book needed to be on my own story.  But I don’t necessarily think that’s the case for everybody.  I know there’s a lot of people who write really good books that have a theme to them for each chapter and then they share snippets, like little stories that might illustrate the point that they’re trying to get across but not necessarily go into great depth.

But I think the book writing process itself is such a…I don’t know, transformative experience but I think specially if you have somebody alongside of you who can encourage you and help you to see what’s best.  When you start writing and you just give everything out that you possibly can and you don’t edit.  That’s the mean thing that you want to do when you first start I think is to not edit what you’re saying and you don’t want to spend a lot of time going down _____ but you do want to get out what you feel like you really want to get out and then you go back and then you say, “OK what’s effective here?”  And you push yourself a little bit but I understand too.  You don’t always want to share why you feel certain way or why you did the certain thing or…

Kate Bee:  Yeah, it’s funny isn’t it?  I just felt that once I get started, I will just end up sharing more and more.

Andrea:  Probably the case, but I wasn’t going to say that.

Kate Bee:  I thought of that assessment you got me to do, I’ve never taken anything like that before but it seemed release button.

Andrea:  Well, this has been just a really, really delightful conversation, Kate, and I would really appreciate it if you would share with the audience how they can connect with you the at the Sober School.  I think that anybody would really benefit from just seeing Kate online, on her Instagram feed or whatever.  So maybe you could share your handles and where they can find information about the Sober School.

Kate Bee:  Cool!  Thank you!  Well, I am on Instagram, I am the soberschool and that’s for everything, Facebook and Twitter.  I think Instagram and Facebook come out _____ so I’m definitely the most active there.  Yeah, if you’d like to find out more about me, read any of the blog and I’ve got a couple of free guides on my website.  I’m over at the soberschool.com.  I’ve got a free workshop that’s coming up very soon.  It’s all about reviewing where we are _____, having a bit of a research and if you want to take a break from alcohol, it’s about sharing you how to kind of kick stat that break.  So I’d be excited to share that with anyone.  It will be out very soon.

Andrea:  Great!  Well, we’ll be sure to link everything in the show notes and so I’m excited to share this interview with the listeners.  Thank you so much for your generous time with us today, Kate.

Kate Bee:  Thank you for inviting.  I really enjoyed it!  I think you’ve told me a lot about myself and given me a lot to think about, so I appreciate it.

Andrea:  Well, thank you for your service.  We’ll talk to you soon!

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Find Your MOJO Even in Hard Times with Karen Worstell

Episode 55

We all have that loud voice inside our head screaming at us to avoid doing things that make us comfortable. While this voice is just trying to protect us, we must learn how to silence this voice and not let it stop us from going after our goals or making our voices heard.

Karen Worstell went from being a mom to toddlers who couldn’t afford to buy groceries to the Chief Information Security Officer for companies like AT&T Wireless and Microsoft. Now, Karen coaches women in tech and has a consulting business around tech and risk management.

In this raw and powerful episode, Karen shares why you must make peace with the skeptic voice inside your head and listen to the whisper of your heart, her advice for maintaining your resilience when things become difficult, her mission to help companies realize they should be encouraging their employees to be their truest selves instead of forcing them to fit into a set company culture, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Karen Worstell Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

Today, I have with me Karen Worstell who went from being a mom of toddlers and a computer science graduate student all the way to Silicon Valley with all kinds of amazing experience to the point where she was even the chief information security officer for companies, like AT&T Wireless, Microsoft, and Russell Investments.  Now, she is doing her own consulting business around tech and Risk Management as well as coaching women in tech.

So Karen, I’m really, really excited to have you here on the podcast today.

Karen Worstell:  Oh thanks Andrea.  Thanks for having me.

Andrea:  Actually, I was introduced to Karen, I should say.  I think I might have gone up to you, Karen, to tell you that you did a good job.  But I actually heard you speak at a conference and I was so impressed with your story and your presence on stage because I looked at you and I thought “Oh my goodness, this is a classy lady.”  And you told your story then really wowed us with some of the things that you had to say.

So I wonder if you would be willing to tell us a little bit of what you share that day about that moment in time when things really changed for you, however long ago that was.

Karen Worstell:  Sure!  Well, yah, you know how we all have those events in our life that it’s usually some kind of a crisis that gives us crystal laser like focus.  Really, what I was talking about then, and I’ll just share again, when I was a mom of toddlers as you call it.  I had 2-year old and 4-year old at home and through a series of my own choices, I found myself in a situation where I was standing literally in the grocery store staring at the fruit section and it was like apples, “Where the heck are affordable apples.”

In those days, apples were $49 cents a pound.  That sounds like cheap apples because today, you can spend $3 a pound for apples.  But $49 cents a pound was the going rate at the time in the 80’s and I did not have money to buy apples and I had to go through the manager and asked him, did he have any apples that he had already pulled from the fruit stand that he could sell to me at a discount.

For me that was this moment that said, “You know what, something has got to change.  I can’t keep doing this.”  So about that time my amazing brother, Michael, who is thinker and one of my best friends.  He had a TRS-80 computer with a serial number of six.  He brought that over to my house and spread it out on the table.  It took up quite a bit of space with all of its various components at that time.  It had 64k of RAM, which I couldn’t even operate with my phone with that today.  But he put it on the table and he looked at me and he goes, “Sister, you have to learn to code.”

Now, I have never done anything with computers in my life, and I was pretty sure that if I put my fingers on the keyboard of that thing and did something wrong, it was going up in flames.  I was quite nervous about this piece of technology in my home.  He was very encouraging.  I mean, I literally put my fingers on the keyboard and typed in H-E-L-L-O, and nothing bad happened.

So with his help, I learned to this in programming and Visual Basic and I learned how to program in a language called Forth.  You don’t have much about it these days but I was really attracted to it because it was the way my brain works, which is something called Reverse Polish Notation.  It’s a technical term for the way information get pushed into the computer and then popped back out of the computer when you’re doing code writings.

So I really liked that and I did pretty well with that.  I found out that I was really good at it.  And about that time, _____ University opened up a program in computer science.  They were advertising for students.  It was a graduate program and I did have my bachelor’s degree, so I went ahead and applied and to my surprise, I got in.

When you tell the story before this, there’s just all this opposition in my head that just really exploded because it’s like “OK, mother of toddlers.  I thought you want to be a good mother, right?  How can you go to a graduate school and be a good mother and clearly you have no money,” which is true, I had no money.  And truthfully, I just didn’t do very well with math.  Hello, the computer science department is part of the math department.

So I went ahead and applied anyway.  Kind of ignoring all the voices in my head and fear factor truly because I had no idea how this was going to all play out and work.  I got accepted, and two years later, I graduated with masters in science degree and computer science.  There were tons of people helped me along the way.  After I graduated, I had a number of positions and you mentioned this CISO in Microsoft.

Twelve years after I graduated with my computer science degree, I was the CEO of a Silicon Valley startup, and it focused on technology in cybersecurity.  So it sounds like a really incredible story.  And the reason I like to share it is because it really is everybody’s story because in my experience, really, what happened there was I took it one ordinary day at a time.  It was not a smooth path whatsoever.

There were a number of really huge crises along the way, but you show up every day, just show up every day.  Sometimes it’s enough to show up and say “Whatever today deals me, I’m going to deal with.”  I have no idea how it’s going to play out tomorrow and I did truthfully didn’t think in a million years that I would ever embark on a technology career like the one that I had.

My biggest goal frankly was to be able to get a job that paid me enough to have somebody come in the house…there were two goals.  Two big, hairy, audacious goals I had in my life.  To have somebody else come in the house and scrub the toilets, like that was a big deal because I only had two.  The other one was, it was so important to me to be able to pay my bills and to be able to pay all the bills that were due in one month in the same month and not have to make the choice about, you know, “What am I gonna pay this month and what am I not gonna pay?”

So my goals were not big.  I didn’t have like _____ goal that said someday I’m going to be the, you know, have this big role.  It was just showing up in dealing with each day at a time and that’s where we went.  The thing that I look back on is that it was this kind of a whisper that was in my heart that said “You should do this.  This is the path, you should take this path.”

And I had plenty of opposition also in my head saying, “Don’t pay attention to that.  We’ll try to do around that out if we can because this sounds risky to us,” and to go ahead and say “I’m gonna follow the whisper of my heart and I don’t understand how it’s all gonna work and I can’t give anybody a plan.”  But look where it went, you know.

I think it happens multiple times in our lives for paying attention that exact same scenario.  We hear that whisper that says “This is your path, walk in it.”  And then we hear the opposition that just really fires up, the skeptic in our head that says “What, are you crazy?  We’ll give you the list of all the reasons why this won’t work.”  And that can be so discouraging and there are times when we succumb to that.

I guess that’s the reason I share this story is to say, don’t succumb to that.  If that’s the whisper of your heart then follow it, because you won’t know the whole plan.  You can’t see the future.  All you can do is _____ that big desire to go in this direction and I’m going to do it, and yes, there will be obstacles.

In fact, some time during my first year of grad school, my 2-year old developed appendicitis which is extremely rare in a 2-year old.  He nearly died.  So I took everything I had, all my computer gear which was still that TRS-80 computer which takes up a lot a room.  I took that with my suitcase, with my clothes and a modem into children’s hospital with my son and all that computer gear in his room so that I could continue to write code.  It’s just that stuff happens.  Don’t let it take you off.  Don’t let your train off the rails.  It’s going to get you where you want to go if you stick with it.

Andrea:  You know, Karen, that image of being your son’s bedside in a hospital still trying to maintain your education, it reminds me of a lot of women and how it’s easy for us to struggle with guilt over that kind of scenario.  I’m assuming that you would have felt a little bit of some of that too, I don’t know, maybe you didn’t.  If not, then please tell us how.  But how did you handle that tension between being a mom and still pursuing your path that was whispered in into your heart?

Karen Worstell:  Yeah.  That’s a great question.  I think for me, I distinguished between a couple of very important emotions.  One of them is guilt and the other one is shame.  I felt guilty about lots of things by being a mom of toddlers in grad school.  I felt shame about not being able to feed my children.  Which one was I’m going to pick?

I could say I’m doing something about this situation that I’ve gone myself in that I considered shameful.  But I had two small children who I couldn’t afford to raise and I could say “Yes, you know what, that path is gonna be difficult.”  But guilt is a lot of that is in our head, right?  The master skeptic is in my head.

Shirzad Chamine wrote a book about this.  The name of that skips me right now but I can send it to you so that you can share it with your listeners if you like.  He really talks about how all of us are completely equipped with the judge, jury, and all of the accusers in our head and they all take on very specialized roles and one of them is the master of guilt.  And that voice, it says “Boy no, other people wouldn’t be doing it this way.”  Or “You really should have handled this, don’t you think?”  I mean, “How how could you be in this situation and how could your son be so sick?”

I had taken a week off the school when my son got sick.  I took a week off and didn’t go to class and stayed home with him and he was still sick.  The doctors, the nurses, and everybody that we call over the phone and everyone we talked into in urgent care patted me on the head and said “Dear, your son has a flu,” and he sent us home.  So after seven days, my toddler was changing color.  He was so septic and I just said “That’s it, we have to take him to emergency room.”

While we drove in, we called the doctor, we said, we’re coming in.  So here’s a good guilt one for you.  I handed my limp toddler over to his pediatrician who looks at me and says “Why the hell didn’t you get in here before now?”  So yeah, a guilt.  I think, in some ways, I tend to be a little less willing to accept the guilt that other people lay on me and I’m not really sure why.  I’ll lay enough guilt on myself for a lifetime but when somebody else…I said “Excuse me, I called your office every day for a week and you told me it was the flu.”

So yeah, it’s a situation that we can sit down and say “Wow, you know, he’s right.  This is something I did totally wrong and I’m a bad mother.  I’m a bad person.”  What I can say in all honesty was “Could I have done things better, yes.”  “Does that make me a bad person?” “No.”  I’m always about learning how to do things better and I accept that.  People have always told me throughout my career, “If you did X,Y, Z you could have done that better.”  I’m like “Great, thank you.  I will do that better next time.”

I did not beat myself up over the fact that I did my best and I didn’t.  I might not have met somebody else’s standard of what was good.  I did my best and that’s all I can ask for.  That’s all anybody can ask for.

Andrea:  You know, I know that you talked about resilience and I’m wondering how resilience or how that being plays out in these kinds of scenarios with both your education and your career path and then also resilience as a mom and continuing on even when things get really hard.

What kind of advice you have for people along a similar journey who feel like they’re hearing this voice that you’re talking before but they seem to keep getting setback.  What makes somebody resilient or what kind of advice would you have for them?

Karen Worstell:  When it comes to that voice in your head the one that stops us then and attract sometimes, the best thing I can say and it’s echoed in Shirzad Chamine’s book, I think it’s positivity, intelligence or something like that is to recognize that, first of all, every single one of us has that voice in our head to some degree that is going to be the skeptic, right?

I learned to make peace with that skeptic.  The way that I describe that to people and teach that actually in one of my courses is to recognize that skeptic actually all it really wants is for you to be safe.  It wants for you in not be ever in harm’s way in any degree.  It doesn’t want you to fail.  It doesn’t want you to do anything wrong and the way for you to do nothing wrong is to do nothing, right?

So I try to just recognize that when that voice pops up in my head or that feeling in the pit of my stomach, I ask myself “Am I actually making a decision here that’s just a very dangerous decision?”  If the answer is no then I come back and say “Alright then, I will listen to this to the extent that says, what do I need to do to be smart, but I’m not gonna listen to it to extent that says stop.”

Andrea:  Hmmm great distinction.

Karen Worstell:  It’s there to keep us safe.  It’s just that we don’t exercise the part of our self.  So why is that a whisper in our heart and a skeptic screaming in our head, right?  Why is that?  It’s because the skeptic gets more exercise.  We need to learn to listen to the whispers so that the whispers speak with a loud voice.

Shirzad Chamine talks about it as if it’s stepping into your sage as opposed to stepping into your judge.  When the judge starts to get very active, they have to be very conscious and intentional about it and to say “I’m not going to give you all that exercise because my sage needs it more,” and to step into the part that says “What’s the wisdom in this.  How is this the right thing for me to do?”  Why does this make a difference to my life and why would this be so helpful?”  And to let the sage speak as opposed to the skeptic.

I think if we give that more exercise, and he has a ton of exercise about it in his book, but if we give that more exercise, we would definitely not wrestle so much with such a loud skeptical voice all the time.  Maybe we just give out way too much exercise.

Andrea:  That is a really, really great image.  I love that.  OK, so Karen, I know that eventually you stepped away from cybersecurity for a time.

Karen Worstell:  I did.

Andrea:  Can you tell us about that experience?  Why did you stepped away?  How did you end up as a chaplain of all things?

Karen Worstell:  Well, I have always, and throughout my career, I was very fortunate very early to listen to Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Principle Centered Leadership and all these other books of that organization put up.  One of the things he always talked about there was writing down your goals, what are your goals.

In 1997, and I still have the paper where I wrote this down and took that in my day timer.  I wrote a list of things that said, these are the things that I want to do in my life.  I want to write a book.  I want to lead an organization.  I want to be a chaplain.  It was on this list.  It had always been there and I think it was born out of my experience of being a caregiver of some capacity for elders when I was an adult.

This is a whole lot of the conversation that five times during my career; I either scaled back my career and I took a leave of absence so that I could care for somebody in my family with Alzheimer’s.  So I knew that that very difficult experience of doing that kind of care giving had to have a purpose and it seemed to me that at that point in time the chaplaincy was the way.

Well, fast forward to 2011 and my mother was dying from Alzheimer’s.  My sister had just been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and I was working as the chief information security officer at Russell Investment at that the time.  So in a space of about a month, my sister gets very ill, I get laid off at Russell Investments and then the next day, my mom died.

So for me, I was like “OK, I get it.  I’ve been through this before.  This is it.  This is a setback.  This is how I’m gonna do it.”  And I always have like plan A, plan B, plan B1, plan B2, plan B3.  That’s how I work.  I would always shift into the new plan.  If the first plan didn’t work out, I have to shift into the second plan and I had that.  And I couldn’t make any of those plans work, for the first time in my life, I was unable to put one foot in front of the other.  I think my grief finally was so overwhelming that I feel myself really unable to make a decision.

I love cybersecurity.  I didn’t stop loving it.  I just was like “OK, I’m gonna get back into it.  Here’s how I’m gonna get back into it.  I’m gonna take this _____ course and I’m gonna study forensic and I’m gonna get back into the forensic thing.  I had always wished I was going to expand my capabilities and all I had some time off and none of it worked.  I couldn’t make myself even take a class on a subject I had always loved.  I was like “What is up with that?”

It was really like being stuck in a rip and being able to tread water and nothing else.  I couldn’t find a way out of the water, all I could do is tread water.  And I turned down all those dates with my friends who wanted to talk with me, who wanted to talk about projects.  I was like “I can’t.  I can’t and I don’t know why I can’t, but I can’t.”

I was very frustrated by all of that and then I finally just decided, “Hey, listen to this.  You are gonna have to settle it.”  It took about a year which was extraordinary amount of time but then when I ended up doing I was talking with a friend and I said “You know, I haven’t been able to go back in the cybersecurity.  I’m not really sure what that’s all about.  I love it.  I’ve always wanted to be a chaplain.  I don’t know what’s that about, but I’m not really sure what I’m gonna do next.”  And my friend basically says “Hey, I know this person, you need to call her.  She’s the head of chaplaincy.  You need to have a conversation.”

Basically to make a long story short, I called them.  They were interviewing candidate for their incoming class.  I called her and I signed up.  They accepted me like that.  I was enrolled.  This is pretty much about three years of training and my interest was in palliative care.  I loved, loved, and loved the work with the whole different side of connecting with people.  I did about 2000 clinical hours of supervised training and class time.

I got another masters degree and started off on that and my last role was as a palliative care fellow at the VA hospital in Portland.  I truly loved the work I was doing there but more and more what I saw was the moral distress that I was witnessing not only with patients and their families but with medical staff, reminded me so much of what people in the cybersecurity industry were dealing with.

I wasn’t really sure how they characterize it or describe it but I made a decision to go back.  Because the truth is that someone gets about 15 to 30 minutes of their time when their in crisis in the hospital _____, but the bulk of the people who are really hurting who need that kind of support in order to continue their daily life are in the workplace.  And there’s this principal of proximity in chaplaincy that was in World War I where the chaplain didn’t wait in their field tent for the soldiers to come to them, they went to the _____.  That’s what I decided to do.

Out of that, our program on resilience, you know, we have a program Make Resilience Work.  We also call it MOJO Maker, but it is intended to bring the kind of resilience needed to thrive in an imperfect workplace and to be able to build your career, excel in the place where you plant it and to be able to navigate your career and your life through all the stressors that we have to deal with.  I’m mean; I’m not the only one who has kids who get sick.  But we all have to figure out how to navigate that and stay healthy and that’s what we decided to do.

Andrea:  That’s awesome!  Have you worked inside of a company around this particular, you know, bringing in your chaplaincy kind of background?  Have you found that to be a welcoming place or you mostly focusing in on the individual?

Karen Worstell:  We’re focusing on the individual right now and I just had a conversation with another missing individual who has a career in HR.  We’re looking to clear this to be able to bring a weekend intensive and to offer that to a corporate environment.  And then what we have on to back into that is a years’ worth of programming that people can access online to support them with all the things that they learned in the intensive.  We’re hoping to be able to take it there.  We haven’t done that.

I will say that one thing that I did in April, I was invited to run to a peer-to-peer sessions at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, which is a conference that attracts 40,000 cybersecurity professionals.  I’ll try to be very brief about this but what was very interesting about it was we ran a very quick exercise.  The title of the peer-to-peer session by the way was Why are Women Leaving Computing, which is a big issue for us because the number of women in Stanfield is making in progress everywhere accepting computing where its dropped off the cliff.  Nobody really knows why and I’ve been attracted to try to figure that out.

So I ran this session and I had everybody in the room, walked around the room.  I said “Walk around the room once for one minute.  We’re going to walk around the room and I want you to be yourself.”  And then I said “Walk around the room next and I want you to pick the energy that’s the opposite of yourself.  So whether you identify as a female, walk around the room as male, whatever that energy is for you that’s the opposite of what you are, I want you to walk as that.  And just take a look at the other people in the room and see how everybody was doing.”

And then the third time I had them walk around the room I said “I want you to be neutral.  Don’t be yourself but don’t be anything else either.”  What was mind boggling about that exercise; first of all, it was a great ice breaker because it made everybody uncomfortable.  So nobody had any fear speaking up after that.  The thing that was so impressive was that universally, everyone noted how much energy it took for them to try to walk around the room as something other than themselves that when they try to walk around the room as neutral, not only did it take energy, it sucked all the energy out of the room.

It basically made the room slowed down.  So people said, it made the room slowed down.  It looked like a room full of zombies.  And I said “OK, let’s think about what it’s like for people who come in to a work place with unique gifts and talents, unique life experiences.”  We hire for diversity and we have an organization full of color of every kind you can think of and we managed it all down to beige.  We tried to manage everybody the same.  That means that we have a culture where the people who are in the culture have to try to figure out what the culture is and used up a fair amount of their energy just trying to be what the culture expects.

I came away from that thinking, “This isn’t a gender issue.  This is an equal issue.”  I’ve shared that with a number of people.  I’m going to be writing some stuff about that to post on to LinkedIn and onto the RSA blog, but this is where we’re at, right?  We have beige organizations.  We have organizations where all the colors have been sucked out.

What happens is people used up all their energy trying to fit the culture and they don’t have energy left over for creativity and innovation and all the other things that we need so desperately right now, especially in cybersecurity.  We were dealing with issues that only get worse and we have to come up with some really creative ways to try to really deal with that.

The creativity is born out of a person’s feeling safe enough to express their ideas as their ideas, you see.  And if they’re so busy trying to figure out how does their organization want them to be, they’re walking around the room as something other than themselves.

Andrea:  Definitely!  It kind of goes back to that imagery that you’re using before about the person’s screaming or the judge screaming, what was it called?

Karen Worstell:  The Sage and the Judge.

Andrea:  Yeah, the judge was screaming and so then your attention is drawn to that.  You have to spend all of your time worrying about that instead of being able to listen to that voice, that other voice inside of you that’s saying “This is you, just do it.  Just be it.”  Oh it’s so good.  I love that exercise.  What a neat way to help people visualize and experience the truth of what it means to be authentic, really.

Karen Worstell: Yeah.  It took three minutes.  And I have to credit Rachael Jane Groover.  She was the one who introduced that exercise in a workshop that I attended with her.  She had 300 women in the room who were walking around trying to be neutral.  I just remember looking, “We are a room full of zombies, like there’s no differentiation, no creativity, nothing here.”  That’s what inspired that exercise.  But yeah, in three minutes, it made the point.

Andrea:  And I think you could even make that point for whether be a culture at a work place or school or a family or wherever you are when there’s this heavy expectations that drain people and make them so that they feel like they have to be something else, or they can’t be who they are.  That’s really a neat description.

Karen Worstell:  So our Make Resilience Work, what we focus on is helping people find out who they are because a lot of us have been trained not to remember right?  It’s true, right?  We have a little bit of that trained out of us.  So learn to be comfortable in your skin, in your own space unapologetic for who you are.  Understand where your path is.  What is that whisper?  Where do you want to go?

And then the third strategy is all of the tools and techniques that we can all learn to help us navigate to that place that we want to be and _____.  Now does that mean that we completely don’t ever blend in with other people?  No, it means that we make a conscious choice to fit into those places that fit us where we can really fully bring all those gifts and talents and make that contribution that everybody craves.  Everybody craves to have their work be meaningful and to matter.

We’re pretty excited about it and this is going to be…we started off with some early steps in helping people get started and people can take a look…we have three sample courses that we really want people go out and test drive and give us feedback.  So I’ll share with you a link for that so that you can try it your listeners.

Andrea:  Oh yes, absolutely!  So we’ll definitely link to this in the show notes, but do you recall what those are right now at the top of your head?  Or we just go to karen…

Karen Worstell:  Yeah, sure.  You can go to karenworstell.com.  There is a menu item there called MOJO Maker.  If you go to MOJO Maker, you’ll have the link that will take you straight _____ the website for MOJO Maker.  You can sign up for free.  We’re not going to bug you to pay later.  Really what we want to do is get people’s feedback.  We put it out there so that people can try that.  It’s three of our most important modules that will eventually be part of about 22 different modules that people can take over the course of the year if they want to.

Andrea:  So that would be www.karenworstell.com correct?

Karen Worstell:  Yeah, karenworstell.com and it will take you to…there’s a link inside there under MOJO Maker.  It will take you to the class.

Andrea:  Well, thank you Karen for spending sometimes with us today, telling us about your story and sharing your abundant wisdom and your heart for people.  I really enjoy listening to you and having this conversation with you today.  It was really, really great.

Karen Worstell:  I enjoyed it too, Andrea!  Thank you so much for having me in your show and for the chance to talk with you.