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Bonus Episode: Being Authentic, Featuring Shannon Plumb · Humanity Working

• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: Hi everybody, welcome to the show.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: And uh today, I'm just gonna start off with a very brief story.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Back in 2023, uh, the company that I run, Bullying Lines, was uh accepted into Techstars Workforce Development Accelerator.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: And as part of Techstars, for those of you that are not familiar with it, Techstars is an organization that invests in startups and then provides a whole bunch of resources to startups to help them, uh, to help them thrive.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: And as part of the process with Techstars, they have something that I think formally is known as mentor magic, but internally people refer to it as mentor madness because you get to meet an extraordinary number of mentors over the course of a few days.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, in my case, I think it was about 80.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's eight to zero mentors over the course of about a week.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then during that process, uh the idea is that you tell them a little bit about your business, they tell you a little bit about your approach, and then you find uh some mentors that you're gonna be working, working with over the course of the time that you're working extensively with Textars.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: You spend maybe an hour a week with the mentor going through every single aspect of your business.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: Now, before I did that Textiles process, I'd been involved in uh mentoring myself, both as a mentor and a mentee, fairly extensively, and I thought I knew what good mentoring was.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then I met today's guest.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh today's guest is Shannon Plum.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: She was she was one of those mentors, but not just one of those mentors.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: Shannon is globally recognized as being one of the best mentors around.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: And from that moment, I realized what the difference was between like a good mentor and an amazing mentor.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: And also from that moment, I thought I'd love to have Shannon at some point on the podcast.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: And today, here she is.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: So welcome to Humanity Working Shannon.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm blushing a little at that introduction.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate it.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, but to to give you a very brief indication of uh Shannon's bio.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: She has been working in the field of, if you like, of advising people for uh for several uh several years.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: And um she is now the founder and CEO of Pearl Advisors, which gives her an opportunity to work with people across all different domains and help them to really lead or lead authentically in their businesses.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna be talking a lot today about um that concept of authenticity.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna talk a great deal about how you go about living authenticity yourself as a leader, but then also how you can help others with it as well.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um she's got over 20 years of experience scaling businesses across industries from Fortune 500 technology transformations to startup acquisitions.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um and she serves on multiple advisory boards and is the founder of the RealTe newsletter, which we'll include a link to in our show notes here.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: So uh Shannon, I want to really start with that concept of authenticity.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um The term, let's before we even get into it with regard to leadership or anything else, the term itself is something that you hear constantly these days.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: We often hear that we're now in the age of authenticity, and authenticity is the um is the currency through which the world works and all of this kind of stuff.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: People are being um you know judged positively or negatively, depending upon the amount of authenticity they display.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: But so our companies, brands, entire uh the entire economy to a certain extent, is driven in some ways by this almost, I don't know, ephemeral thing called authenticity.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd love to understand from you what you think about that, but then also what authenticity really means for you.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I struggle with it.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost become jargonized where it's just like everyone uses it and they all have different definitions of what it means.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a great first question to start with.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: When I think about it, and I tried really hard to think of another word that captured it, and that's the problem.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have enough words in our English language to actually capture the essence of what this is.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: But when I think about it, it means that you're real, that you're human, that you show up to conversations genuinely wanting to help the other person that you're engaged with achieve more, be better, and that you're leading with the trueness of what you who you are and what you feel, meaning that you're not putting on masks, you're not playing a game, um, you're not playing the politics.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a little bit of vulnerability in there, there's a lot of realness in there, and there's a lot of just genuine curiosity and tuning into what makes you unique in this world and leaning into that.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what strikes me about that answer is that it's sort of it's sort of new and old at the same time.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: If you if you think all the way back to the granddaddy of self-help type business books, how to win friends and influence people, it's in there, isn't it?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that is it.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: The idea is that you not that you pretend to be interested in the other party, but you actually are, you know, and and without necessarily using that that phrase directly, he talks a great deal about the idea of it, it starts with wanting to actually help others, for example.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I think you hit it.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a new concept, and it's definitely not um revolutionary in the fact that it's always been there, it's always been a thread.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the reason you're hearing more about it now is because people have gone a long time not having to lean on that authenticity.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: The market's been good.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's been a plethora of cash in the world, things have been going relatively smoothly.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's been many years since we've had war in this country, things along those lines.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we're feeling it now because people are just fed up with how the world has evolved.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then you add on AI on top of that.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that really even highlighted it even more because now it's hard to determine literally who is a real human being versus who is not, who is a robot, who is AI that's just acting behind the scenes.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that that highlighted this concept even more.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you always say what's old is new again at some point, but it does have a slightly different spin on it, just based where we are in history and in what's going on in the world.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I suppose another factor, of course, is social media and the fact that social media allows us to feel more directly connected to the people associated with the brands that we like or or dislike.
• 7:58
  unknown: Yeah.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's good point.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: One of the unusual things for leaders is that it was very possible to be a kind of anonymous leader of even quite large organizations.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: And there's uh that degree of anonymity, or there's a degree of anonymity which is now lost.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: And people will, as I say, sometimes make purchasing decisions based on the qualities that they determine to be of a leader, how that how that leader would present themselves in a one-minute TikTok video, for example.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's gotta be that's gotta be challenging, especially for leaders that are accustomed to presenting themselves in a very polished way and realizing that the polish doesn't necessarily work in the way that it once did.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's a great point.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think that what we've done is highlight the ability to be vulnerable, to, to show the imperfections.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a good thing.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: There is obviously no one in this world that's perfect.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I even hate the idea of perfection because it's just so elusive and never can be achieved.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so that vulnerability is actually what connects us to each other and allows us to uh feel a realness in a relationship and see, oh, they're just like me.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I can relate to that.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: I can relate to that.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: I do think there is one struggle with social media still, which is most of the time people only put their best days out there.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I am starting to see a slight change on platforms like LinkedIn, where people are sharing the hard news, the layoffs, the things that aren't going well, but it still feels vulnerable and a little bit scary for a lot of people.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: So there is still this mask of all social media is presenting everything in the best light.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that food picture that you see on Instagram is perfect, but they probably used AI to make it look that way.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's not really how it came off the stove.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's this idea of what we see is not really real as well.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that's why you see even more people leaning into in-person events and conferences and sitting around a table with each other because that is real.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: We can touch it, we can feel it, we're there physically.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so we don't have to guess where the AI or machine takes over, where the masks come on or off.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: We can see it in real time.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's interesting.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I've just started, uh, I think I don't we'll see how far this goes, but I've just started speaking to recruiters inside organizations who are returning to in-person interviews, even for more junior roles, at quite significant additional cost for them, uh, especially when they're talking to people that are potentially all around the country.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: And even if the role itself is remote or hybrid, they're sometimes saying, okay, I want you to come for an in-person interview for this role.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: In part, it was because they were not sure as to whether any or all of the answers were being prompted by AI and what how much of the real human that they were actually getting in the interview process.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: So we're definitely wrestling with this.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: I I you see all the time this idea of like, how do I present my authentic self while getting the efficiencies that I want to that I want to get from, for example, AI.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and of course, as AI gets better, we're losing, I think, a little bit the ability to be able to instantly filter out what's AI speak and what isn't AI and what isn't AI speak.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: But we're feeling it in terms of a slight, too much polished, slight lack of authenticity from the people who we're speaking to.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I know a lot of organizations are are struggling with that.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, you make some great points there.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: I love the idea of more in-person interviews.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, later in my career, every job that I accepted, I met in person.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: But again, they were more senior roles.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: So even thinking about that for junior and the difference of people who are just now graduating college, they grew up with computers, digital, social media.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: They that is native to them.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas when I graduated, that was not native to me.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like for me, it feels more comfortable to be in person and to interview in person.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: I bet that's a stretch for some of the more junior positions to actually fly somewhere and meet face to face.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's not how they've entered the job market or what their experience has been this far.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's interesting.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: I like it.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: So let's move on to specific characteristics of leaders.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: The way you put it is that you help leaders stop pretending to be someone else and start winning as themselves, which it's it's actually a really cool sentence.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: I've experienced you directly working with me on that, so for which uh which I'll forever be grateful.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: But I'd love you to explain how you start helping people understand what that actually means.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think it all comes from a place of curiosity myself and loving to help people solve problems and puzzles.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I always think about it as, oh, there's a little tidbit over here, and there's a little tidbit here.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's the first part of it is how I approach it and thinking about how I want to engage with that person.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's also um thinking about what served them really well and having them think about what's going really well and where are the challenges coming up.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of it's done through asking questions, but I think the uniqueness that I bring to the table is layering on life experience.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've worked over 25 years in corporate America and having to navigate a lot of this myself.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of it comes from my own background.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was early into technology in B2B SaaS specifically, and I chose a path that was not common for women, which is technology sales.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember coming to the table and looking around and realizing really early on I was the only woman, not only at the sales team, but it continued through every, you know, letter ladder rung that I approached, where I was the only woman in the boardroom.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I was the only woman in the executive leader team.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so much of that caused me to have to stop and tune in really deeply to what who I was authentically, because it was really easy for me to start taking on the traits of the men, because that's what it was, that sat around me.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it hit me when I started reading sales books.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a million sales books out there, but if you look at them, vast majority of them are written from a male perspective because the author is male.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: I can't sell, and I don't think it's natural for many people to sell the way that those books are written, because they are written from that perspective of almost an assertiveness and aggression in a lot of cases that would come across very inauthentic to me and for me.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's recognizing in your gut what isn't feeling right?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: What is feeling off?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so many people have been trained in leadership to put on that mask and to ignore.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so the first thing I work with people is asking questions like, what isn't feeling right?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: What are things you're questioning?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: When do you get those like butterflies or that like gut feeling that something's off?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it might sound out there and esoteric, but it's really true that your body reacts to what is real to you and what is not.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: It reacts to when things feel good and when they don't.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's the first sign I think of that people start paying attention to, just noting that.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And from there it's coaching, okay, what would feel better?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: What about this doesn't feel good?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: How are you showing up?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: How can you show up authentically and still achieve the same results or even better results?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I think we're taught in American culture specifically, and especially in entrepreneurship, that things have to be hard.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: If it's not hard, something is wrong.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: And when I started questioning that, I was like, well, wait a second, why does it have to be wrong?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm following who I am authentically and I'm being real, that should feel easy, right?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: That shouldn't feel hard.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: That should feel with ease.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And easy is probably the wrong word because that makes it seem like you don't have to put any work into it, which is not true at all.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you have to do extra work.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: But when you get into the ease of it, when you get into the flow of it, and when you are following what your instincts are telling you, what's really important to you, it does go with ease.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Things do go with flow.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: When you're not a salmon streaming swimming upstream any longer, the the waves carry you, the current carries you.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what I help people tune into.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that looks a lot of different ways.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just, you know, how you show up in the boardroom, it could be how you interact with your peers, how you're leading your team.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Are you showing them it's okay that it'll be vulnerable?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Back to our earlier conversation.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Are you sharing your mistakes and telling, saying, I don't know what the answer to this is.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Let's come up with this together.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: All of that builds stronger human connections because they see you as a real human being and they can relate to you.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the most important thing that's missing when you put on this polished everything is perfect mask is nobody can relate to you all of a sudden because nobody's that perfect and they can't see you in themselves.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: It strikes me that there's a lot to break through, though.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we often talk on this podcast about the I didn't get where I am today problem.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: And for British people in our audience that actually uh that are of a certain age that will actually mean something specific to them, there was a very, very famous uh sitcom in the 1970s.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: I will recommend it to anybody if they can get their hands on it.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's called The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: And the in the sitcom, there is a there's a boss in it called CJ.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: And about every third word when he's asked to do something, his response is, I didn't get where I am today by doing X, or I didn't get where I am today by doing Y.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it could just be simply like, Would you like to sit in this chair, CJ?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't get where I am today by sitting in that chair, you know, that kind of thing.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: So they were increasingly more ludicrous.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: But it was what it was trying to do was to articulate this idea of a very, very fixed approach to what was right and what was successful, and it was what that human had done, that senior human had done previously.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, the challenge is here that's twofold, right?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: You've got the senior people inside inside the organization who have an opinion as to how things should be done because they've done them, right?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: And it worked for them.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: And they're proselytizing that that type of viewpoint.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: But then also, particularly when you're working with some older folks, I would imagine it's personally difficult to break out of that.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: So comes back to that comment that made earlier about the the idea of you know being very polished in front of a camera and being and you know having certain production values and running everything through a press team and you know, all of all of that kind of stuff.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: Those things have been, those behaviors behaving in a certain way for people that have got to a certain level have been associated with success.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: So how do you even start the process of breaking through that to the point where they're open enough to go, you know what, I'm gonna try this a little bit of a different way?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I think the thing that you just nailed down is someone who would not be my ideal client.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think the first thing that I look for is somebody who's open and realizes that what got them there isn't gonna get them to the next level, and that they are willing to put the work in and be introspective and be open to exploring other possibilities of how they show up.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I honestly probably would say I don't think you're a good fit for a client to work with because you're so set in your ways that you can't see any other opportunities of ways that you could approach this differently or be that you could show up differently.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's the first thing I've learned in my career that to attract, magnetize the people that align with you and to repel the others, and that's okay.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not for everybody.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, authentic leadership isn't for everybody, not everybody wants to change, and that's totally great.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: I respect that fully, but again, I only want to work with the people that feel that way and that are willing to do the hard work.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: It is hard.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Change is hard.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Humans hate change.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we repel it every chance we get.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you see this in business, but you also see this just in personal life and routines, and you know, the reason the diet pills exist is because people don't want to exercise because it's hard.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: They don't want to change their diet.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, we have a phrase in our field for the type of person that is the good customer for the attribute that they need.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: We call it humble commitment.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um because it's for us, it's both those two things.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's like having the humility to actually be open to the idea that what you're doing right now might not be right, and having the commitment to change it.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: And if you have both of those things, you're probably in a good spot to be able to cope with whatever is coming forward and adapt and adapt and change your circumstances.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: So you talked a little bit about entrepreneurs.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd love to jump into that in a little bit more detail.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um one of the things that strikes me as an entrepreneur is that typically in this community the people that we're taught in the entrepreneurial community, the people that we're kind of taught to look up to, I would say generally fit into one of two categories.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: And the first category is I've made a hundred million dollars, so do what I did.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then the second category is I've made a hundred million dollars.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: And in the early part of that, I struggled a lot and nearly went under.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so you can resonate with my with my story.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: But now I made a hundred million dollars to do what I did.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: But it's always got the I made a hundred million dollars so do what I did element to it.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: I was thinking about you the other day.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if your ears were burning, because I went to one of these perennial versions of that where somebody sat on a stage and talking about their adjourney to it and so on and so forth.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: And and actually it was two.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: So there were two.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: So the first person did their flavor of that.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: And the person next to me looked over to me and said, Do they realize this just doesn't resonate with like a struggling founder, right?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm lovely that they've got a hundred million dollars now, but right now I can't pay the bills.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: And and it doesn't inspire me, right?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's just the others, I know there's rich people out there.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't inspire me.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: What I'm going through right now, what I need is help with where I am right now.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: But then the second person came up on stage and they were asked the usual questions along the lines of, you know, what point did you just discover X or Y, or how did you find your product market fit?
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: And the person on stage in question just said, Before we do any of this, I want to make one thing really, really clear.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: The main reason that I made all the money that I made is luck.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it's nothing other than blind luck.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: I happened to be in the right place at the right time.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: If my idea had been six months earlier, I probably would have failed.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: If my idea had been six months later, I probably would have failed.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't a genius, I was just lucky.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: And the entire place broke out in like relieved applause.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess the purpose of that, of that lengthy story, is to ask you about how what do you think is the best way to connect with entrepreneurs who are struggling to pay the bills?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: You talked about the idea of it going from hard to easy, and we'll come back to that in a moment.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: But just the how do you connect with them on that day-to-day struggle without making them feel stupid or just they're not that they're not as smart as the person they're looking at because that other person is successful and they're not.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: How do you how do you connect with them without making them feel dumb?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think empathy is probably the word that immediately came to mind.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the people that stand up there and say, I made a hundred million dollars and I'm amazing, and you just need to do steps A, B, and C.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can't, you're an idiot, they immediately repel all of the people that care about authenticity, that are in the trenches, that I mean, they just run as fast as they can.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: So really, I think it's listening to the struggles and highlighting the things they are doing well.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody has wins, and I think we do a really poor job as humans of celebrating the little wins.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: I always think about that yardstick analogy where it's like you've got a goal and then you get there, but your goal has moved, your finish line has moved further, and you never stop and go, wait a second, I actually reached my goal.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: My goal six months ago was this, and now I'm here because you're always thinking in the future and you're always thinking about how much further you should be.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I think a few things like there is it's great to be aware of what's going on, it's great to learn from others, but there is a little bit of an entrepreneurship of putting on some blinders and really focusing about where you are, what the challenges you're trying to solve, understanding why people want this challenge solved, what it means to them, what happens if they don't solve it.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it's the entrepreneur now being empathetic to who they're selling to.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: But me as somebody who's working with advising, coaching, mentoring, whatever the arrangement is, it's me being empathetic, understanding what they're trying to do, what challenges they're having, but also helping them celebrate those wins.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really, really, really big on every day, like know to win.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Think of something that happened that was great today, because entrepreneurship is one of the hardest things I have ever done and seen people do.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they say if you want an easy life, definitely don't go into entrepreneurship.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of the hardest things you can do, right?
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so helping them celebrate those wins, I think, is really key.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then helping them see what that future is and breaking it down.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing is we get overwhelmed by huge goals.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: We get overwhelmed by thinking that we have to change totally who we are and throw everything out the window that we've been doing for the last 40 years, and all of a sudden we need to do something completely different.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's not reality.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's like inch by inch, 1% by 1%.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so breaking it down into small enough goals that you're like, oh, I have I could do that one thing today and I can move it 1%.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: I love what you're saying here because it's kind of we're kind of rounding out of the theme here, right?
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: Because in a sense, you you've talked about the fact that it is entrepreneurship is difficult, right?
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's difficult in the sense that you don't just show up and the money arrives in your account.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's difficult in the sense that for many entrepreneurs, they get into this, into it with this idea that, you know, they're going to be their own boss and they're going to be able to make all these decisions.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: And then very soon they realize that actually at best it's the customers making the decisions for them, right?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because their idea might be, they might think their idea is terrific, but if the customer disagrees, you don't have a business.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, or the advisory board is making is making decisions, or not necessarily making decisions for them, but getting very close to that.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then the board board, once that comes in, might actively be saying, no, you're not doing this, or yes, you are doing that, if you want to keep your job as CEO.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: So there's that sort of disconnect between you think what the freedom is going to be and the reality of the freedom you actually have.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: But then of course, there is just that that you're responsible for for making sure that money comes in and and paying people and you know, all of those kind of kind of pressures.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: So all of that, yes.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: But as you say, it shouldn't have to feel hard, right?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: It shouldn't have to feel difficult, and you don't have to make it feel more difficult than it needs to be already.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of language associated with this though, isn't there?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's like the grind, you know, there's the hustle, there's the putting in hours and the hustle, and you know, all that that culture, right?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: There is, you know, there are popular podcast called Startup Hustle.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: I've been on it.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: And there is that sort of idea that everything is accomplished by outworking other people and doing the 90th hour when somebody else has done the has only done 85, you know, or something on those nights.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: So that that balance is an interesting one to strike.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: When you're do you ever find when you're working with people and you kind of open their eyes a little bit and going, oh yeah, this actually feels a lot easier and that's great and that's awesome.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: They then start feeling, I don't know, guilty that it feels that it doesn't feel as horrible as it used to.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's just human nature is oh, I've trained myself to think this should be hard, and now I'm just not working hard enough.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not putting in enough hours, I'm not on the right path, I'm never gonna make money because this is just way too easy.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's taking that and reframing it so much in life as a reframe.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: No, now you can you can let the things be easy that are easy, and maybe there's things that are harder for you that you need to spend a little bit more time on, or maybe it will allow you to push yourself and grow in ways you didn't think about because you've got that much more capacity, energy, health, whatever it might be, time to do that.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, so it's it's it is a balance and I think it is kind of a mind warp when you think about it, because we're all trained to think that it's gotta be hard.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: And when I came to that realization that it doesn't have to be hard, my life became so much more enjoyable.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying I don't go back into it and be like, I'm not working hard enough.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: And there are times I'm working, you know, pulling working late at night and getting up early.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, that's just it's not all, it's not gonna be easy, but it should be with ease.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that, you know, you you alluded to something which is also finding something that brings you joy, your why.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like you don't start a business as an entrepreneur without understanding a really deep why and why you want to do it that kind of supersedes anything else in your life.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: It is that meaningful and that driving to you, that why, that you're gonna be willing to do the hard things to get there, but it doesn't mean that you have to become a different person and that you have to put on an act while doing it.
• 31:28
  unknown: Yeah.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the key.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this applies to almost any work, actually, whether you're an entrepreneur or whether you're working inside a company for something else.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: If you if you can continue to make the connection with the why you're doing this in the first place, then you're in good shape.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: If you can't, then uh then things become a lot more difficult.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen this actually a little bit in myself and with people that I would refer to as mission-driven founders.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so for folks that are not uh entrepreneurs in our audience, founders, I would say, see if Channel agrees, but I would say they largely fit into two bracket, two buckets.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: The first bucket being the people who are being an entrepreneur for uh because they love the idea of entrepreneurship itself, right?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: They uh love the idea of building a business and creating a business, maybe selling a business, and they will happily build the business, create the business, sell the business, get some money, build another one, rinse and repeat.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe they'll do that three or four or five times during their career because they love that idea.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: And they're really creating economic momentum is through through the business, and hopefully they're creating some personal wealth as they as they do that.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's the second category of entrepreneurs um that are really all about the mission.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe they'll only have to start one company because that this is the thing.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: They want to change the world, and they want to change the world with this specific thing.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: Before I move on, would you largely agree that that's a good categorization as to where employers uh where they fit?
• 32:57
  unknown: Okay.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: I I do agree.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: I do agree.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: I do agree.
• 32:59
  unknown: Yeah.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: I was saying for the benefit of the tape, she's nodding.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, so the um so that those broad categories are interesting because particularly if you're in the in the second category, it can be quite stifling because you wind up saying, okay, I want to improve the world, I want to change the world in this specific way.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: But then customers come in and they say, I don't want this thing that you did, I want this thing.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: And you have to regularly and repeatedly ask yourself the question, is this thing that I'm now doing still connected to my why?
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes it will, and sometimes it won't.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: But if it's not connected to your why, you want that ease goes right away.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: All of a sudden, you're pushing a rock uphill every every single day.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: When you're working with a founder, particularly these sort of more mission-driven founders, how can you help them discover that?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: How can you help them understand if what they're doing is really connected to what lights them up inside still?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of my favorite sayings or mantras that I have really held on to and worked with recently is let go of the how.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: And helping people see that how they get there is independent of their why, that they just need to make sure that they're aligned with their why.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: But the how you can't define 60 steps ahead what that's going to look like in three years.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: All you can do is make decisions based on today and the circumstances, the people you have around you.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: And remembering as an entrepreneur, if someone comes in as a customer that tells you you have to do something that is not aligned with your why anymore, that as an entrepreneur, you have the okay given your situation.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, to say, I'm sorry, that doesn't align with the vision, and you can choose to let that customer go, right?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: They're no longer a great customer for you and realigning around that.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think bad decisions are made and people lose sight of their why or disconnect with their why when they're in a scarcity mindset, right?
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: Which is why you always say, like, if you can raise money, if you can have the freedom, if you can have that support, it's much easier with an abundance mindset when you feel that way to make decisions that align with what is important to you.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: It becomes harder when things, when the vices start tightening and the board starts telling you you have to do things and right, that's when it becomes harder.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but if you're truly mission-driven and if you are truly aligned with that why, and that's the most important thing, just having a litmus test.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is aligned with my why, I can let go of some of the how.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need to, I don't need to rehearse or to make it practice exactly how this happens.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: As long as I'm moving in the direction that still aligns with my why, that's okay.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: We all have to bend places.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: You can't be too rigid.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's not black and white.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's a ton of gray area in business.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's how I really look at things and try to help people think is this aligned with your why?
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: Let go of the how.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Let go, let go of the tactics right now.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: Are you still able to achieve what your goal is with this information that you have in this time in place?
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and of course, we all do live in a world, um, fortunately, in a world of constraints.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: There's one constraint that I'm that I'm particularly interested in because it ties back to the idea of it being easier or hard, and that's the constraint of time.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think that if you we talked about the idea of grind and hustle and all that kind of being in our language, but the other thing that is in our language is the thing that this podcast was initially called Way Too Busy.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh it it reflected that, right?
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: The idea that you'll go into an office where from my perspective I'm recording this podcast from a from uh entrepreneurial shared shared workspace.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: I guarantee you, if I walked out of there right now and I saw three or four or five people from different companies that I knew, I'd be like, How are you doing?
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, busy, like really, really busy.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's the first, it's the first thing that we talk about.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: When you're working with leaders, that can be a really interesting challenge because if you are working so hard to the point where you're not getting enough sleep, you're not getting enough exercise, or you're not even just getting enough time away from work, even if you love it, right?
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: You're not getting enough time away from work to give you any perspective.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: One of the first things that is gonna go is effective decision making and effective decision making about your business.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: But it's gotta be so hard.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I know it's so hard from my own having seen it from my own perspective, right?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's so hard to see that yourself.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: You can't see it yourself because you're in it.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah you can't see the hour or two that you shouldn't be working, you can't see how it would benefit you or your company or the people that work for you to I don't know, take a day off.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: So particularly again for those people that are really maybe they're in a company and they're early in career professionals and working every hour because they're highly ambitious, or they have their own company and they're working every hour because they feel they can't afford not to.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: What's the how do you make them see the benefit?
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that there are some people that have a support community around them that will start setting up red flags and being like, Hey, Paul, we lost you over here.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: When are you gonna spend time with your family?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, those things, or doctors that say, Hey, you better get that hard earned control.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: So there are there are red flags that come up.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think with the the situation you're describing, a lot of people get tunnel vision and sometimes miss those red flags too, right?
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're so focused on what you're doing and and it's almost a guilt.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of it is societal.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think that there are other cultures, like I travel to Italy and I love Italy, and they have a completely different relationship with time, completely different.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: They take hours to eat, they don't mind taking a siesta in the afternoon, you know, that there's just a different relationship on what is expected.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: I also lived on a Caribbean island, I can tell you, very different relationship with time there as well.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: So some of it is a learned treat.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's something that we've learned in our culture, something that we've been, it's been pounded into us, work harder, work harder.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you've got to study more, you've got to do this.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: So recognizing that, I think, is the first, looking for those red flags.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: And one of my favorite sayings is slow down to speed up.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: Is that something you've ever heard or worked with?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: We actually, I actually wrote a newsletter slow down to speed up.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: We think of it ago.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'll send it to you.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'd love to read it.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to read it.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: And why that is so important is because you can't see the force through the trees.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you're right up against something, you can't see what's going on.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think that we owe it to our teams, to our companies, to actually build in the times when we can slow down, both for mental recharge and physical recharge, but also to get perspective.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: Slowing down allows us to see the full picture.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: It allows us to assess what's important and what's not.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're so in it, it's really, really hard to do that.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I work with people and creating routines, creating space in their schedule where they can slow down.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: And their expectation is that they're not doing anything during that time.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they're taking a walk, whatever recharges them.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: But it's amazing.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've had more shower thoughts and more running thoughts than any other time because I am where I am and I'm doing something, and my brain's just kind of like organically and naturally flowing through what's going on in my life.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so giving your time yourself time to do that, I think, is absolutely key, but you have to prioritize it.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't, it's just never going to happen, especially in this society where we live.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_02: So as we finish up here, Shannon, I'd I'd love to talk a little bit more about the specifics of mentoring, coaching, and those other activities that you perform.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: And and um we have a we actually have a model in our company we call Scamp, which stands for skills development, coaching, advising, mentoring, and peer support.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it's sort of designed to show all of the different things that somebody needs to be to be successful, uh, and the support that they need from their community and the resources around them in order to be in order to be consistently successful.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: I know from working with you that you have a you can wear a lot of those different hats and you can you can flip easily from from one party to the other.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: But when you when you are forming a relationship with a client, there's stuff that you get out of it.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: There's benefit that you get out personally of the of those relationships, I'm sure.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: So how would you describe the joy that you find and the benefit that you get from wearing those hats and from helping other people thrive?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's the that's my why.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's the whole reason I do what I do, which is the impact.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: I love seeing an aha.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: I love somebody suddenly believing that they can do it when two minutes ago they didn't think they could do it, or discovering their why, or just a little tweak that makes their life a little bit better.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: That brings me intense joy.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that was my entire career.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: My favorite part was leading teams because it's really a little bit therapy, a little bit psychology, a little bit just being a good human to figure out what drives each person, what's their why, and what are they missing to get them and help them get to that next level.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I'm able to help somebody realize something or watch it in real time, that brings me a great sense of fulfillment and accomplishment that I've I've made an impact, a positive impact in the world.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it might be something that's just a tiny little thing.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I again I celebrate every one of those little wins because I think that's just so important to acknowledge each 1% growth, each 1% difference that you've made, especially when you see what's going on in the world.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: And in total, it gets really easy to be consumed by that.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I just keep coming back to I've made a difference.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've made a difference, and here's what I'm able to do.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that makes my life better too.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: And in terms of that, of that journey towards Towards becoming one of the top mentors around.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: You I I have a phrase that I often use, right?
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_02: Which is we're we're bad at everything before we're good at anything, right?
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_02: So the so there must have been a time when you were less good at this.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh what have you what would you say you do differently when you're mentoring people now than you would have done, say, 10 years ago, 15 years ago?
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, I would never have called it mentoring 10 or 15 years ago.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: I just I think I'm in my harshest critic and I would have looked back and said, I don't have enough experience yet, right?
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I think part of it was I drug my heels for a very long time and really needed to feel confident that I've had enough of the life experiences and also that I didn't need it from an ego perspective, because the second it becomes egotistical, which isn't all bad, everyone has ego, but then I'm doing it for the wrong reasons.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not really trying to genuinely help somebody, I'm trying to make myself feel better, which is just so I needed to get mature enough in my own career, confident enough in myself, and you know, develop those things before I felt confident, even calling myself a mentor.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: I might have called myself a leader, I wouldn't call myself a mentor.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that was really important in my journey.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: But back, you know, when I was leading early teams, I think one of the things I would do is dictate rather than not even, I'm not saying you should be um a democracy, but I would be such a dictator that people wouldn't understand the why.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I learned in my career that there's you've got to explain what's in it for them.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like sales 101, right?
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: What's the value for you to do this?
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because human change is hard.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if I can communicate clearly that the value to you is this, and you still push back, okay, and we got to do it, we got to do it.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I find more and more that uh having asking people, bringing them along on the journey, having them have self-discovery, being part of the process makes a huge difference.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: And a mentorship, you know, not every mentor mentee relationship is successful.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: There are some that the person's just not open to growth or you your personalities don't align.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like all of those things happen.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I've learned rather than to push it, just like I talked about with ideal client, like attracting and repelling, the same as a minimum relationship.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: If it doesn't feel healthy, it doesn't feel aligned and it's not a fit for one reason or another.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'd much rather introduce you to somebody else who is a better fit and call it.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think people appreciate that honesty, integrity, and not wasting their time.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we've seen uh with a lot of the companies we're working with that maybe they have a mentorship program.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um the one of the first steps they do is they buy some fancy software that helps them match people appropriately, or they or maybe it's not even doing matching, maybe it's just administering administering the mentoring.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: But very little attention is play, if you like, almost to the art of it.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_02: If you had advice to companies, because a lot of companies have invested in mentoring, what are the things that you see organizations get wrong the most when it comes to setting up mentoring programs?
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think the thing that I see most often gotten wrong is dictating the outcome.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning they're investing in it thinking they're going to do X, Y, and Z rather than investing in it for the fact that they want to give their staff, their employees, a place to up-level themselves to grow in whatever way feels most fulfilling to them.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: So when companies have a vision that we're going to achieve this return on investment from the program, it really defeats the purpose of the program because each person's unique.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I never have the same conversation twice.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like I have a client that we have the exact same conversation with the client that's right after them.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: Every client is unique because we're all unique.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that authenticity, I think, is what is missing in most mentoring programs.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: Just acknowledging each person needs something different, and you can't judge ROI on a certain outcome or uh how this is going to look at the end.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_02: Last question for you.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: So you're in the field of helping people become their best, most authentic self.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: What do you look forward two or three or four years?
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: What do you need to work on?
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_02: And what do you hope that your future self will do better than your current self does?
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_02: Such a good question.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think that I need to work on continuing to trust my gut.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think I know that I have very strong intuition.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I have been trained, like so many other people, to tap that down.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_01: And something this work has given me is access to acknowledging how I feel and that being okay and not having to have a definition around what that feeling means.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that it's okay to say it just doesn't feel right.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas I I have struggled with that in the past in dragging my heels because something didn't feel right and I needed to like verbalize what exactly it was, and I put my finger on it before I would acknowledge that feeling was real.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: So continuing to do that because that will allow me to continue to show up authentically.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: That will allow me to continue to help the people in the best positive way and to show up without that ego and really give myself fully to whomever I'm working with, coaching, advising at that point in time to help them achieve their goals.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_02: Shannon, thank you so much.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's a perfect way to leave it today.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_02: And as a reminder, Shannon is the CEO of Peril Advisors, that's P-U-R-L.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I would, if you do not know Shannon, get to know her.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because uh I can personally say that she's been enormously helpful to me, and I know that she's been enormously helpful to uh to other people as well.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you so much for joining us.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Humanity Working Podcast.
• 50:14
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• 50:17
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• 50:21
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