Fire & Earth Podcast E91: Improving Relationships with Self Love

Marketing best practices are actually holding back businesses from having the impact and relationship with potential clients, since it is usually about YOU, YOU, YOU … when you clients want to talk about ME, ME, ME.

Using the Hero Method developed by our special guests Kathryn Gillett, allows you to make your potential client the HERO in your #marketing and places them and their experience at the center of your marketing. It also follows the classic hero story arch, which almost every movie and book are based on. Why? Because we all love a good #story, especially if it is about us.

Learn how to create much more effective marketing when you use the Hero Method when you listen to this #fireandeartpodcast episode.

Listen in at: http://www.jasonmefford.com/fireandearthpodcast/

Download Kathryn’s free e-book to get you started on creating the Hero Method in your marketing at: https://www.theheromethod.com/DecisionJourney/

Transcript

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kathygruver: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the fire and earth Podcast. I am your co host Kathy Gruber.

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Jason Mefford: And I’m Jason Medford, and today we have Catherine Gillette with us and we’re so excited to get into our conversation today. So welcome, Catherine

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Kathryn Gillett: Phase is really great to be here.

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kathygruver: So why don’t you tell our listeners and viewers a little bit about yourself about what you do. I can’t wait because I was just on your show and

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kathygruver: Very excited

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Kathryn Gillett: So I’m the creator of hero method and what that’s all about is helping entrepreneurs find the words to talk and write about what they do in a way that is I put it gets a wow instead of Uh huh.

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Kathryn Gillett: Too much

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Kathryn Gillett: Too many times are too many entrepreneurs really have trouble talking and writing about what they do in a way that really grabs their audience’s attention and gets them.

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Kathryn Gillett: You know, leaning forward and saying, oh, that’s interesting. Tell me more which, after all, initially is all we really need to do

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Kathryn Gillett: We need them to be interested in intrigued and want to know more. And then that authentic conversation can be getting whether it’s in person or

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Kathryn Gillett: Or on the web. That’s really what we need to do so here method does that all the way from the initial introduction, all the way to loyal customer. It’s about staying connected with them in a

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Kathryn Gillett: In an authentic human to human connection, rather than, you know, marketing communication and that’s it uses the hidden powers of story to do that. So those are the kind of the unique things about the hero.

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kathygruver: I love this, especially in this day and age where we are tracking our homes. We are trapped on zoom this has become communication. This has become that relationship.

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kathygruver: And we had a guest on ages ago who talked about story and how he weaves story into the corporate conversations and things. And it was a fascinating conversation. So what is your background that got you to this point. How did you come up with this.

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Kathryn Gillett: Well,

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Kathryn Gillett: I was, I had been actually I was really inspired by Joseph Campbell’s work when he first did. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Power of Myth interview with Bill Moyers

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Kathryn Gillett: So that that pretty much changed my life because that’s when I decided what I was going to do is follow my bliss and not do what I was supposed to do.

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Kathryn Gillett: And not do what they thought I should do and you know what my family thought I should do all of those kinds of cultural pressures.

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Kathryn Gillett: And so that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. And initially what that meant was, it was this light bulb moment. Oh, I’ll write a historical fiction novel.

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Kathryn Gillett: Because I was also an amateur historian I was the Elizabeth and historian for britannia.com at the time. And so what, but my problem with historical fiction was, and still is, it tends to be long on fiction and very short on history.

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Kathryn Gillett: Yeah, and I i actually personally think it’s an ethical issue like if you’re good at it. I mean, you don’t have to be an expert but read three books on the subject, and then write your novel, you know, then

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Kathryn Gillett: Because it’s it’s your piece, people think they’re learning history, but they’re not. So that was my I was on a mission to write a historical fiction that was engaging and historically accurate. So I used I took the the dry bones of history. It’s a, it’s basically about this.

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Kathryn Gillett: Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe this adventure, and went on and I used the mythic motifs of the hero’s journey mythic motifs and archetypes of the hero’s journey to be the foundation of that story.

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Kathryn Gillett: So the fictional. The only fictional character in the book is the hero who goes on this adventure. So we see this. We meet Drake and everybody and have this adventure through his eyes so that started that, and then

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Kathryn Gillett: What I was doing to pay the rent, so to speak, at the time, was I was I, I already had donkey’s years experience in marketing. So I was writing copy

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Kathryn Gillett: For for corporations at the time and doing messaging and branding work and that side of thing is it as a consultant

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Kathryn Gillett: So I’ve realized, you know, if I could bring the dry bones of history to life, using the music motifs of the hero’s journey. Maybe I could do that for my clients.

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Kathryn Gillett: My clients at the time were were tech companies and that tends to be kind of a dry subject for for many folks. And so that’s how the hero method was born.

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Kathryn Gillett: To really use that as a foundation for messaging and storytelling for companies and so yeah that was about 10 years ago that I first, you know, was kind of had that aha moment and that

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Jason Mefford: Was that’s really cool and it’s it’s only something that 100% of entrepreneurs could use right

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Jason Mefford: It’s, you know, because it because it’s

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Jason Mefford: You know, like you’d like you’re saying technology is kind of dry well for some of us actually technology is pretty cool right but

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Jason Mefford: For the, for the masses of people. It’s a very dry subject right i mean like yesterday I was talking to a guy who’s actually a coder.

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Jason Mefford: And you start talking with coders and they just go nuts about kind of the art behind it, you know, and some of the stuff like that but but to most people, something like computer code.

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Jason Mefford: is boring. Right. I love that the dry bones of history and you’re bringing it to life. That’s great imagery. I know you’re a writer.

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Jason Mefford: By using imagery like that. But it’s, you know, like you said, so many of us as entrepreneurs. It’s the same thing. We’re really excited about what we do.

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Jason Mefford: We know that it’s it’s important for people, but it’s hard to actually capture and engage people and the fact that people love stories.

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Jason Mefford: Right, so, so when you were saying the hero method at first. I’m like the hero method that’s kind of cool, then you started seeing stories. I’m like a hero story, I bet. Here it comes. Here it comes. That’s where

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Kathryn Gillett: Yes. And actually, you know, thank you. Give me. I want to just take a moment to say, yeah, I think technology is really cool to it is just again. And this is just the classic problem of it’s the way we talk about it the way

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Kathryn Gillett: And it’s anything that we do. There’s all kinds of we all of us every entrepreneur has every right to be really proud of what they do.

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Kathryn Gillett: And to that. The problem is we are so immersed in what we do, we’re bathing in all the details of what we do and they become normal we become what’s called habituation

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Kathryn Gillett: And so we just think it’s so basic and yet we’re absolute experts at it we forgotten what it’s like

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Kathryn Gillett: To have beginner’s mind to not know all these details or not even really care about all those details. And that’s really where our audience is especially when we’re first introducing them and even, you know, there’s a whole

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Kathryn Gillett: I call it the decision journey that we that hopefully we’re guiding our audience through but

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Kathryn Gillett: But very rarely do they really want to know or need to know the details that that really excite us about what we about what we have to offer. It’s really about how can we help them get from where they are to where they want to be. That’s really

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Kathryn Gillett: What our what our job is as marketers

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kathygruver: Well, and I love that you said that every profession has it’s exciting parts, that’s really how we language it. I mean, I’ve talked to, I

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kathygruver: had a conversation with a coder. Specifically, I don’t know how to code. I don’t do math. I don’t do I turn my computer on that’s as far as it goes, and I was talking about coding and I said,

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kathygruver: I just like how your brain works to put all these symbols together to get content is just stuff like that’s fascinating to me and he was quite the storyteller.

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kathygruver: And he explained to me in great detail how he does coding and it was the most fascinating thing ever. And I know I could have asked somebody else in the company where three seconds, and it would have been like, I’m so sorry. Is this question, you know.

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kathygruver: It is how we language things and how we tell stories. And I know, didn’t you, Catherine. Did you tell me you had an acting background as well.

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kathygruver: Yes.

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kathygruver: When you tell people you’re an actor. They thought that was the most exciting thing ever. They wanted to hear about it because it’s different because it’s exotic because it’s exciting. If you say I’m a coder. People are like,

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kathygruver: Oh, I wonder what that guy does, you know. So how do you take this bare bones of a company. And how do you shift that into the story to get people enthralled by it.

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Kathryn Gillett: Well, the very most important thing, the most important thing is

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Kathryn Gillett: That we need to let go of the belief and it’s reinforced all over the place and it’s in best practices marketing that we are the hero that our product is the hero that our solution is the hero, we need to let go of that because

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Kathryn Gillett: The, the correct way I would say to look at it is and the more effective way to look at it is that your audience is the hero on a quest to find the elixir that will heal their wounded land.

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Kathryn Gillett: Again, this these motifs. Right. And every, every great story every, every blockbuster movie every international best selling novel and every story across cultures and across time. There’s the hero. And there’s a mentor always the two

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Kathryn Gillett: So your audience is the hero, you are mentor. You’re, you are Obi Wan Kenobi to your audience is Luke Skywalker, who needs to learn how to use the force which is the elixir

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Kathryn Gillett: In order to end to master the force in order to make that million to one shot and make their world a better place. Right.

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Kathryn Gillett: So it’s this. Is this really important mental shift that needs to be made that when we realize we are our audiences mentor offering them helpful insight and advice at every step of their journey.

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Kathryn Gillett: All of a sudden, everything changes. And so the, what we need to tell them changes because it isn’t the story about our product.

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Kathryn Gillett: It’s this. It’s their story. I call it the story of transformation. It’s about how do we, what’s the story actually is about how we help them get from where they are from their wounded land called the wonderland.

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Kathryn Gillett: How we help them get from the wounded land to the heel land. That’s the story that’s important. It’s not the story of our product.

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Kathryn Gillett: And how it came to be an old boy right we see pages and pages of the history of the product in the about us page on websites, you know,

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Kathryn Gillett: That’s where yeah so so that’s not what’s important, what’s important, the about us page should be about that story of transformation. What we’re about is helping transform

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Kathryn Gillett: take you on a journey of transformation from again where you are to what you’re already wanting and needing and yearning for

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Kathryn Gillett: We understand that. And then what we can take you there. And then even beyond that because very often what your audience is wanting and needing and yearning for

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Kathryn Gillett: Is just kind of even the beginning of what we all of us have to offer. But that’s where we need to connect with them. We need to connect with them based on where they are in their journey, not where we think they need to be.

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Jason Mefford: Well, that’s where it really this kind of a story approach varies significantly from, you know, I use the word corporate marketing, right, because that’s what you know most entrepreneurs kind of

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Jason Mefford: Mimic corporate marketing, right. And usually the corporate marketing the about us page. Here’s the features and benefits of our product. This is why we’re so much better than our competition, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right.

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Jason Mefford: And for most people. Again, it’s like, well, I really don’t give a shit about the features and benefits. I’m trying to find this elixir to heal my wounded land where is it right and it, it shifts the focus from being about us to being about the client or the customer.

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Jason Mefford: Right. It says when you’re when you’re focusing on the hero and you know you talked about. Yeah, there’s always a hero, the hero is your customer, right, there’s always the mentor.

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Jason Mefford: The Yoda. The Obi Wan Kenobi, whoever it is, right, that’s helping the hero along but there’s also some other pieces to it as well. Right. There’s got to be the villain. You’ve got to have the you know the the

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Kathryn Gillett: Shadow

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Jason Mefford: You know, yes, some some

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Jason Mefford: Vader Darth Vader.

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Jason Mefford: The, the, the Lord says if you know anybody there has to be that that villain in it as well. And I’m guessing as well, too, right, because we’re talking about movies every movie that is successful has

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Jason Mefford: Almost all of them have the hero’s journey as the basic storyline, but there’s ups and downs. Right. So it’s like as soon as the hero kind of comes up.

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Jason Mefford: Then they come back down again, right, because it won’t hold our attention if everything is good or everything is bad, you have to kind of mix, a lot of that stuff in and I’m guessing.

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Jason Mefford: You know, kind of from a marketing standpoint. That’s why there’s the pleasure and the pain.

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Jason Mefford: side of it that you’re talking about, as you’re going through the journey as well. Right. You’re talking about the wounded land, how much it sucks to live in a land that doesn’t produce anything

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Jason Mefford: And then you start talking about the benefits, how would it be if you could find an elixir that would, you know, heal your land and you would have bountiful harvest after that point in front of us imagery to right

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Kathryn Gillett: Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: We can kind of geek out on this right I’ve

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Jason Mefford: Already I’ve been writing down. I’m like, oh, damn. That’s good. Alliteration like that.

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kathygruver: Jason

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kathygruver: Can be talking about his bountiful

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Jason Mefford: bountiful land as I, Lord over my province.

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Jason Mefford: Oh god, anyway.

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But

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Jason Mefford: But, but I think that’s kind of what what you’re talking about. Right. Catherine, so I mean how would make maybe can, can you give kind of an example of

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Jason Mefford: We’ve talked about the theory. But how would how would a business owner and entrepreneur may be actually kind of put this into into practice for them. Right.

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Kathryn Gillett: Well, you know what I can do, I can actually give you an example.

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Kathryn Gillett: Yeah. Can I, can I actually read an example.

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kathygruver: Oh, yeah.

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Kathryn Gillett: OK, cool.

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Kathryn Gillett: It’s a, it’s I will come, we’re going to compare best practices marketing and hero method.

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Kathryn Gillett: Approach. Okay, so what I’m going to read first is this is a person who learned to hear method and wrote this, they own a yoga studio and they wrote them themselves, not one of these words is mine. This is all them writing it themselves.

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Kathryn Gillett: Tired of overcrowded classes that leave you feeling frustrated bored or injured. It doesn’t have to be that way.

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Kathryn Gillett: Imagine yoga, that makes you feel safe strong accomplished and relaxed, your experience begins before you get to the front door.

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Kathryn Gillett: You enter an oasis of palm trees, plants and a flowing fountain. You open the door and you’re greeted with welcoming smile.

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Kathryn Gillett: The spaces clean bright and smells pleasant you settle in, you hear your instructors voice, the rest of the world falls away you indulge in your meantime for the day.

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Kathryn Gillett: You enjoy the challenge of your class the personalized direction you receive is priceless. You know, you’re staying safe and you feel stronger, more confident each week.

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Kathryn Gillett: After class you re, re enter the day you knew. You’re refreshed with a sense of accomplishment and calm. Welcome to the slow body experience. We’d love for you to feel this way to give us a call 55512345 670 movie. And we’ll help you get started.

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Kathryn Gillett: Okay, now

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Kathryn Gillett: Just notice how you felt when you were taking that in. Now notice this, this isn’t actually this is not this is really pretty good copy using the best practices features advantages benefits approach. This is a different yoga studio and this is their postcard.

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Kathryn Gillett: Our cities yoga alliance school was born out of the passion to share wellness. We believe in the integration of your physical, mental, and spiritual health to help you achieve the optimal state of well being and balance.

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Kathryn Gillett: This is how we created your yoga classes and spa treatments, our cities premier yoga and spa center. We are in a waste for relaxation and rejuvenation.

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Kathryn Gillett: The center is a place to play explore, discover and find your balance. We are a warm environment often literally

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Kathryn Gillett: And feature a variety of daily classes, male and female, changing rooms with showers a fresh juice bar and a spacious classroom where you’ll find a wealth of new friends and self awareness.

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Kathryn Gillett: Which yoga studio, would you want to go to

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Jason Mefford: Go for first one

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Yeah.

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kathygruver: And I don’t like yoga, I

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Kathryn Gillett: Don’t want to go there.

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kathygruver: And I’m going to go to say they weave they they’re giving you an experience.

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Kathryn Gillett: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

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kathygruver: Well, and I was gonna say, because as you were talking before you give the examples I’m thinking, you know, when I was doing massage

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kathygruver: It was I offer deep tissue and trigger point to help you with your sports injuries and data. So rather than talking about what I offer asked what you say what they’re going to get from it. You’re gonna walk out with your muscles relaxed in your

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kathygruver: Worries and cares swept away and you know so it’s like, oh, okay.

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Jason Mefford: Well, and, and, and as you were reading it to. I was noticing how many times the second one. Use the word oui oui oui oui oui oui.

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Jason Mefford: Oui oui oui. You know, I noticed one you in there. Yes, whereas in the first one. It really was. It was talking about you and taking the person literally on a journey using the words so that they could see, hear and feel right because

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Jason Mefford: Yes, focusing on the

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Jason Mefford: The senses.

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Kathryn Gillett: As well, yes.

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Jason Mefford: You can actually envision yourself walking into the yoga studio versus the other one where it’s just kind of talking at you.

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Kathryn Gillett: Right. Exactly. Exactly. So this is a, there’s a lot of Neurology in in the background of the hero method as well.

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Kathryn Gillett: And so this is actually called. It’s one of the most powerful things. And this is one of the things your listeners can take away this is one of the most powerful things you can do.

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Kathryn Gillett: To I like to say inspire rather than persuade and heaven forbid, don’t even go into manipulation, but to inspire your audience. There’s a called mental simulations.

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Kathryn Gillett: And so what what urologist know is that when you were when you were when I tell a story when you were listening to that neurons were firing in your head as if it was happening to you.

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Kathryn Gillett: It literally is the experiences being stimulated and when we have this you trust me months from now, you’re going to remember this postcard copy

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Kathryn Gillett: Yeah, because you’ve had the experience when we had the experience is not just reading and words coming in and it you know going out.

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Kathryn Gillett: It’s actually an experience and we have that experience. It’s incredibly powerful. That’s probably the most powerful thing we can do is create an experience with our content not share information right

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kathygruver: Well, and then the other thing that inspires a business owner to do is make sure they actually give you that experience because like, you know, if you show up and there’s no palm trees with a trash can. And there’s a homeless guy. And there’s puking.

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kathygruver: And then the receptionist.

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Was so wrong.

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kathygruver: Your yoga class. Yeah, she’s smoking and there’s

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Jason Mefford: Like the mom from throw momma from the training.

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kathygruver: Flow turn to see what in the world.

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kathygruver: I mean it’s keeping you accountable for

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kathygruver: Giving them a good experience and making sure that you’re living up to that journey. After the marketing because yeah you get them in the studio and then they go, that’s not right. So that’s, that’s fabulous. It’s, it’s going past the marketing them.

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Kathryn Gillett: Absolutely. Well, this is, this is one of the aspects of it is that it brings up the question, what is the elixir. I mean, there’s actually here’s the details of the elixir yeah

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Kathryn Gillett: And so the elixir is, you know, is it you know you know somebody’s basement.

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Kathryn Gillett: You know, next to a garbage dump, or is it this, you know, have we created this you know really lovely peaceful place. What’s the, what is the elixir yeah

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kathygruver: And you’re for a yoga studio now.

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Kathryn Gillett: Basement near garbage.

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kathygruver: Trash yoga.

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Jason Mefford: Are you tired of those ice places this smell.

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kathygruver: We call it hot.

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kathygruver: It’s hot and stinky.

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stinky.

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Kathryn Gillett: stinky yoga. Yeah.

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Kathryn Gillett: Very good.

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Kathryn Gillett: And only in the summer in like New York

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Kathryn Gillett: You know,

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Jason Mefford: Everything to. Yeah.

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kathygruver: It’s like go yoga, but we use rats.

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Kathryn Gillett: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

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Jason Mefford: Well, and it’s it’s funny because to as we were talking, you know,

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Jason Mefford: I mean, at the beginning, we talked about. I mean, you used to write for Britannica right and and the whole historical fiction stuff.

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Jason Mefford: You know whether again that’s that’s that’s book or if it’s if it’s, you know, there’s a lot of historical fiction ish shows and movies and other things like that as well.

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Jason Mefford: And you know why people are. I was one of those nerds that actually read the encyclopedias. You know, when I was a kid, you were too. Yeah, I know.

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Jason Mefford: But, but so many people you know they do get their history lesson by reading historical novels by watching these movies or tv series about historical events because it’s a more enjoyable way to for people usually to be able to consume and get the information

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Kathryn Gillett: Right.

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Jason Mefford: And so just the same thing, you know it’s it’s a much more enjoyable way for them to read one of these, you know, hero method.

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Jason Mefford: Advertisements the wrong word, but marketing piece right much more enjoyable for them.

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Jason Mefford: To do that, it’s that experiential that you’re talking about. And again, if they feel good after going through that experience. I’m guessing they’re going to feel good towards your whatever it is that you’re selling as well. Right.

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Kathryn Gillett: Absolutely. That’s a really, really, really good point. Jason because

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Kathryn Gillett: Basically the summary of the point I’m going to make is everybody’s an emotional bond.

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Kathryn Gillett: Yeah, we are not rational decision makers, we really aren’t human beings just simply aren’t there’s no research that shows we make decisions based on you know logic.

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Kathryn Gillett: It is about how do we feel about this product. How do we feel this is why people stand in line.

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Kathryn Gillett: To go read, you know, if that if there was another Harry Potter book coming out, man. People would line up around the block right

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Kathryn Gillett: Same thing with a, you know, no, no. The latest Star Wars. Right. It’s just like people lined up around the block to go see that again and again.

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Kathryn Gillett: And and this is all because of how they feel about it.

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Kathryn Gillett: And also because oh by the way those stories and are also very much the hero’s journey story is very much based on that. Yeah. So we are, but it’s the emotional. It’s the emotional connection to the gadget, you know, the next Apple thing, right.

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Kathryn Gillett: At you know people line up because there’s an emotional connection to the company that that Apple is very carefully developed that emotional relationship with their with their audience.

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Jason Mefford: And I think what you said you know that Emotional. Emotional

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Jason Mefford: Everybody is an emotional by that’s an important thing that people need to get through their head because I’ve actually done. There’s a lot of empirical evidence actual scientific research prove that point as well.

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Jason Mefford: That you know

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Jason Mefford: Six to seven seconds before we actually consciously make a decision.

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Jason Mefford: It’s already gone off in the back of our brain in our subconscious. Yeah. And there’s been several studies that kind of back that up that it’s always

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Jason Mefford: It’s an emotion that causes us to make a decision and we make the decision subconsciously before we ever even recognize it consciously. So the more than your emotion into it, right, the better because because people are going to use emotion to make decisions. Yeah.

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Kathryn Gillett: Absolutely. And then, then, then I think the thing that makes us believe that we’re rational is what happens. It’s called confirmation bias. So what we’ll do is we’ll find the facts to support the emotional decision and it will say, Oh, I just made a very smart choice because

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Kathryn Gillett: You know, this isn’t this

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Kathryn Gillett: But so if you know our own brain fools us into thinking what a good boy am I, and I’m so rational and I’m so smart, but actually it was an emotional decision. Yeah, yeah.

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kathygruver: I’ve had people come up to me after my talk. So I set out all my books, and they go, this was the greatest talk. I want one of every book. I’m not going to read them, but I have to have them. I’m like,

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Okay.

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kathygruver: I’m not gonna be like, no. Now, you said you weren’t

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kathygruver: Gonna read them. So I don’t want to make that set, you know, but it’s true. People get excited about. I’ve done that to your mind you get signed by the author, then you get home, you go

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kathygruver: To the stack of books to hold my computer up high enough, you know, um, so I know Catherine people can work with you individually. I also know you have an amazing book. So tell us about the amazing book.

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Kathryn Gillett: So the amazing book is available on Amazon and just go and search out the hero method and they’ve got two versions ones for tech companies and ones for small businesses.

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Kathryn Gillett: And yeah, and if you’re a prime member, you can get the Kindle version free so that’s that’s a cool deal

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Kathryn Gillett: And

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Kathryn Gillett: Oh yeah, oh yeah, I knew what I want to say. So the yoga postcard that we liked.

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kathygruver: Yeah.

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Kathryn Gillett: That was written by somebody who read the book, never worked with me personally, she

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Jason Mefford: walked in and she did it.

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Kathryn Gillett: Yeah, so that’s how effective the book is it’ll actually teach you how to write content like that.

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Jason Mefford: Well, and I think it’s an important thing to write for for everybody because I’m an Amazon Prime member. So I’m gonna go download it to right. Hey,

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Kathryn Gillett: You know,

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Jason Mefford: Wish I could give you a few dollars for it. So some of your PayPal account or something.

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Jason Mefford: The point is the reason that yoga studio owner got value from the book is here. She actually sat down.

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Jason Mefford: And implemented what you were telling him right so so that’s an important thing we can read all the books that we want to, but if you don’t actually take action.

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Jason Mefford: And and try to do it, try to incorporate what you’re learning into what you’re doing.

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Jason Mefford: Then you know it’s it’s as good as all those books that we buy and have the author sign and they just sit on the shelf or hold up our computer so you have actually got a, you know, Kathy was giving you good stuff. Folks, now you got to actually go out and try to start implementing it.

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kathygruver: Well, unlike anything. It’s like you can join the gym, you still have to go. You can sign up for

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kathygruver: Some dating service, you still have to swipe. You know, it’s like it is about that taking action and we have

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kathygruver: So many phenomenal guests on where I don’t know about you, Jason, but I’ve actually put some other practices in into motion and being that I’m kind of in the midst of launching my coaching practice. I know what I’m doing. After the show is I’m getting the book.

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kathygruver: Because I need to make sure that my copy sounds like that journey. That sounds like that that that story because that’s who I am. Anyway, so

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Kathryn Gillett: Kathy. I think it’s, yeah, it’s a really, really good fit for you that natural fit for you, I think, to the other thing I just want to say is

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Kathryn Gillett: That a lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs procrastinate about marketing because I I do feel

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Kathryn Gillett: That, you know, you just it just feels uncomfortable and achy like putting ourselves as a hero doesn’t feel right. And what I’ve found in working with with entrepreneurs is when you switch that role and now your mentor.

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Kathryn Gillett: And now you’re writing from that point of view it now all of a sudden the writing is flowing because it actually feels like a true and natural relationship now.

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Kathryn Gillett: With the audience, rather than saying, hey, look at me, I’m so great. It’s like, hey, look at you.

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Kathryn Gillett: On your journey. Are you. Great. And here’s like these way that I can help you. You know, the next step. And the next step.

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Kathryn Gillett: So it changes the relationship. So it changes the way you feel about doing marketing and about writing marketing and I’d like to, if I can. I’d like to offer your audience a gift as well.

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Kathryn Gillett: Yes, we love gifts.

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Kathryn Gillett: And it actually, it ties into I’ve got a little visual here, it ties into what we’re just talking about, it’s the, it’s called the decision journey. Can you see this

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Kathryn Gillett: Working there. So this is the wounded land and this is the quest. And this is the elixir and this is the mastery and that’s the heel. Then, so this is their journey briefly.

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Kathryn Gillett: And so this is the hero’s journey. Their, their decisions during this is you his mentor over here. And so what I’ve, I’ve created an E book.

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Kathryn Gillett: That would love to share with your audience and it basically takes you through this to create the marketing framework that will actually

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Kathryn Gillett: Reach out the, what are you going to do to reach out to your audience and guide them through their quest into mastering your Elixir and becoming long term loyal customers. So it’s

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Kathryn Gillett: It’s a book, they’ll take them step by step. They’re actually creating it. I call it it’s maybe your sales funnel, but it’s their decision journey.

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Kathryn Gillett: So it’s about how to create a marketing plan a marketing framework that will guide your audience through their decision journey. So all they have to do is go to www dot the hero method calm, forward slash decision journey and they can get that gift.

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Jason Mefford: It was the hero method calm, forward slash

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Kathryn Gillett: Decision journey.

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Jason Mefford: Decision journey.

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Kathryn Gillett: One word. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: All right.

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kathygruver: We’ll have that in the show notes. And I’ll have a little if everyone’s watching it’ll go across the bottom of this.

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kathygruver: Wonderful. Yeah.

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kathygruver: So great, Jason, you have a thought.

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Jason Mefford: Well, I was just, you know, just because I know we’re kind of wrapping up on time, too. But it’s, it’s, um, you know, I like what you said there at the end because so many business owners don’t mark it.

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Jason Mefford: Because they feel icky about it right and and so so that that whole idea that you were just saying of switching it from

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Jason Mefford: Us. Oh, you know, are we to the hero’s journey takes a lot of the ickiness out of it and and the reality as I mean one of my mentors just hits this home all the time. He’s like, you know, you’re, you’re, if you’re an entrepreneur, your primary job is marketing.

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Jason Mefford: And if you don’t market, then you just have a hobby. You don’t have a business.

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Jason Mefford: And so for a lot of people that are, you know, struggling as entrepreneurs, it’s because they’re not marketing and if they’re not marketing because they feel icky about marketing then try something like the hero method.

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Jason Mefford: Where you don’t have to feel icky about it. What you’re providing is that elixir to people.

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Jason Mefford: And people are looking for that because they do have the wounded land that needs to be healed. Right. And so if what you have can help them you’re actually doing them a disservice by not telling them the elixir exists right

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Kathryn Gillett: Absolutely, absolutely. And the other thing about this. It’s really interesting. And it’s been proven over and over again and really measurable is when you actually use the hearing that you can see it in that example you use the hero method and you don’t have to sell.

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Kathryn Gillett: Yeah, people just, you know, people, you just going to go to that yoga studio

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Kathryn Gillett: People just going to start showing up and over and over that people will write their web content and all of a sudden

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Kathryn Gillett: This website that used to just kind of sit in the ether of getting crickets, people are calling them now.

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Kathryn Gillett: Because of what they’ve read on the website. So it actually does a lot of the selling for you because you’re creating that authentic connection. You’re creating that emotional connection.

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Kathryn Gillett: You’re helping them feel good, even, you know, whatever that was that emotion, you’re feeling good when you were reading that

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Kathryn Gillett: And that’s that positive emotion that people. Okay, at least, even if it’s a more complicated sell. It’s okay. Tell me more. And now you just keep giving them that

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Kathryn Gillett: positive emotional authentic human to human connection and they’ll just want to do business with you. It’ll just works that way.

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kathygruver: so incredible. All right, we have once we can talk all day about this. This was so good.

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Jason Mefford: Our guests.

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kathygruver: Catherine has been amazing. Catherine wants to tell everybody where to reach you. I know that you mentioned the website already, but let’s tell everybody again.

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Kathryn Gillett: So it’s the hero method calm. You can reach me there or info at the hero method calm is my email.

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Kathryn Gillett: And yeah, so you can go to the website, you can go get the book at Amazon, the hero method at Amazon and those are different ways to or the hero method calm, forward slash decision journey.

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Kathryn Gillett: And there’s a bunch of different options about how you can lean in and learn more about the here.

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Jason Mefford: Well, I know. So Kathy was on your podcast, too. So you have a podcast as well to right

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Kathryn Gillett: No I don’t, I don’t, you know,

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kathygruver: I realized as I was saying that we had such an awesome conversation. I could remember

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Kathryn Gillett: If you didn’t, we’re okay right because

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Jason Mefford: I was like, no, if you’ve got a podcast we want to get that on here to okay

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Kathryn Gillett: Thank you know we just had a really awesome conversation.

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Kathryn Gillett: That went for quite a while but yeah yeah

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kathygruver: So I suddenly had this

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kathygruver: Show it should have been a show. It was a really good

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Kathryn Gillett: It should have been. It was it was a

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kathygruver: Good conversation.

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kathygruver: Anyway, all right, we should wrap. I am Kathy gruver I can reach a Kathy Gruber calm.

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Jason Mefford: And I’m Jason method I can be reached at Jason method calm, so go out everybody have a fabulous week start figuring out how you can start incorporating the hero method in your organization as well.

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Jason Mefford: And help those people help those people that need your help and we’ll catch you on a future episode of the fire and earth podcast. See ya. Yeah.

E98: Finding New Ways to Thrive with Mike Smith

As the world changes, we have to find new ways of doing things … and this is definitely true of #internalaudit that has been operating relatively unchanged using a traditional approach for decades. What will our relationship with the board, management, and the #chiefauditexecutive be like in this new brave world?

I’m joined by Mike Smith to discuss finding new ways to thrive in this #jammingwithjason #internalauditpodcast. We discuss this as well as how to be your whole self at work.

Listen in at: http://www.jasonmefford.com/jammingwithjason/

Mike Smith is the U.S. Intelligent Automation and Solution Lead for Internal Audit at KPMG.

Transcript

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Jason Mefford: Hey everybody, I have a special treat. Today I have my friend, Mike.

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Jason Mefford: Smith with me and Mike is actually with KPMG I’m going to get let him give a little introduction here but KPMG used to be one of the firm’s I worked at too so

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Jason Mefford: You know, we have that that in common as well. But, you know, Mike. Welcome. Why don’t you just give a brief kind of discussion about your role. So people kind of get a context for who you are.

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Jason Mefford: Here and then we’ll just start talking and jump in because I know pre pre hitting the record. We don’t know exactly where this is going to go. But we’re going to have a fun time because there’s a lot of stuff that we have in common, or to talk about. So

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Mike Smith: Yeah, great day. Thanks for having me excited to to share perspective and have a dialogue with you and and your listeners. So I guess longtime listener first time join her today.

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Mike Smith: Eric, so thanks for doing what you’re doing. By the way, I did mention that before but thanks for doing what you’re doing for for all of us, especially the younger folks that are

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Mike Smith: Kind of getting into this profession and navigating their way through how to become even even greater impact. So, so for me I am

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Mike Smith: I am our US internal audit solution leader, which is kind of a our internal tournament title for

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Mike Smith: Our innovation development product development where we’re heading, who do we want to be when we grow up as internal audit I split my time.

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Mike Smith: Doing that and delivering internal audit services to clients predominantly where I live in Dallas have got to spend some time and all over the, over the US but

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Mike Smith: In New York and Dallas mostly but take takes me around and I get to lead a team of people much smarter than I am.

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Mike Smith: That have all kinds of different backgrounds. We call it the CEO ears and of excellence run into a lot of reimagined so I get to do that and partner with our colleagues across, across the US and the globe. So come on stuff.

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Jason Mefford: Very cool one, as you were talking about it because it actually reminded me. I mean, we can talk about whatever we went to on here. Right, so

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Jason Mefford: No it’s, it’s funny because it’s, you know, life, life takes us on different pathways.

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Jason Mefford: Right. And so when I was

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Jason Mefford: I was still at KPMG and I gotten to that point in my career right where you have to kind of decide, okay, I was in a smaller market. It’s time to either, you know, go back to New York.

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Jason Mefford: Kind of in the professional service group.

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Jason Mefford: And do a stint there or move to one of the bigger offices and so I did a big 4000 mile trip one year.

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Jason Mefford: In Dallas was one of them. That was on the list. So I went to Dallas to see what Dallas was like so. Yeah. Who knows had had one of my clients not approached me like you know

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Jason Mefford: Four months later and hired me to start their internal audit department. I might have transferred down to Dallas. So we might have been

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Jason Mefford: Right in the same office really knowing each other for a while so

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Mike Smith: Whoa.

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Jason Mefford: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, Anderson before that. Right.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, it was Anderson before

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Mike Smith: I pass. I don’t think our paths cross there if I

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Mike Smith: Recall, but that my five year stint before KPMG it Anderson.

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Jason Mefford: Okay, so you transition, just like I did, then going from Anderson to KPMG with

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Jason Mefford: The whole sinking of the ship. Wow. Alright.

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Jason Mefford: So many sorry Lucy amazing how and, you know, folks. Well, this is one thing is, I’ll bring up to just real quick and then I want to get into kind of the discussion because they’re

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Jason Mefford: Got some great things that we can talk about. But I know there’s been a lot of people

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Jason Mefford: Worried about well how am I going to develop relationships virtually when I can’t see people. Okay, folks. Here’s here is a real life you just heard it. Okay, I, you know, even though we worked at to have the same firms are very big firm. So we didn’t know each other when we were there.

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Jason Mefford: Right. We got connected on LinkedIn. I don’t know, two or three years ago, I don’t know when it was exactly i sent Mike some messages he’s kind of seen what I’ve been doing and he

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Jason Mefford: starts listening to the podcast we send messages back and

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Jason Mefford: Forth. We’ve talked a few times. Right. And even though we’ve never physically been in the same room together. We’ve built a rapport with each other.

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Mike Smith: We’ve

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Jason Mefford: We’ve learned we’ve gotten to know each other and find where those commonalities are so anyway.

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Jason Mefford: That’s not the purpose of this podcast. But like I said, I just, this is a real life example of, you can do this.

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Jason Mefford: I can I, I’m going to use the word friends. I hope I can say that word, and our

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Jason Mefford: Absolutely, there were actually friends, even though we’ve physically never met each other.

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Mike Smith: Right. Well, that’s the thing. I mean, I didn’t think about

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Mike Smith: The factor on zoom. I know we’re all submitting spar more time on the zoom than we probably have accumulated our lifetime, or would have thought we had. But even on a personal side LIKE MY BROTHER LIVES IN FLORIDA. My sister lives in Colorado.

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Mike Smith: And we would, you know, we would occasionally. I’m the youngest of three we occasionally connect. But now we’re seeing each other and deepening the rapport.

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Mike Smith: And friendship and kinship and family every Sunday right after an hour with my dad and my siblings and

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Mike Smith: But it’s effort. I have to set aside that time, which is, I’m glad to do, but I think we’ve, we’ve got to get away from the barriers that are preventing us whatever those may be personally and professionally.

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Mike Smith: Be able to spend the time that matters. I was telling you before I had my first audit committee meeting in person, this week. Thank you to my client that said we come on out. And after we cleared all the hurdles internally for free it to my

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Mike Smith: By checking on personality.

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Jason Mefford: Or check and all that. Yeah.

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Mike Smith: Because it’s expensive, but appropriate I totally makes sense. But it was really fun. And so I think one of the things that are minded me of is that you gotta, you’ve got to

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Mike Smith: It’s more important now than ever to find sometimes to go spend time individually with people and even in this forum to so

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Mike Smith: Yeah, take advantage of it.

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Jason Mefford: Well, yeah. And it’s, you know, so let’s kind of get in and talk about because like a, you know, it’s, I love having these discussions. Regardless, but to try to

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Jason Mefford: Maybe give some things for people to take away and learn as well. Right. So you know I know one of the one of the terms that you kind of throughout finding new ways to thrive.

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Jason Mefford: I think is a great, I love, I love that.

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Jason Mefford: Term in general. But you know, I think as we’ve been talking even though you know we both got lots of experience, technically, ultimately, I think we share a common

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Jason Mefford: Desire to help our profession in general, more than just from a technical standpoint. And so that’s why you know you hear me talking about some weird things sometimes

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Jason Mefford: But maybe, maybe we can kind of get into some of that a little bit because I know you kind of have a passion as well around helping people.

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Jason Mefford: In the profession.

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That’s right.

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Jason Mefford: So yeah, what are, what are some things I guess that you know as you did you think about to try to help people.

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Mike Smith: Yeah, let me frame it just for a second, even further, you know, I

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Mike Smith: There’s so much challenge with currently right now listen to the environment we’re in unemployment levels, we’re blessed all have

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Mike Smith: Employment. Right. And for those around us. I think we’re responsible as leaders to continue to nurture them care for them. Personally, professionally.

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Mike Smith: You know, I have a one of my best friends that chief in the fire department and his adage is if you’re great at home, you’re probably gonna be great at work.

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Mike Smith: So the union of those things is important. So as we think about how we serve with others. Well, I think having a frame framework and I’m an optimist, as I shared with you. Right. I think the glass is always half full. And if it’s not just get smaller glass.

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Jason Mefford: Or it’s always full.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, there’s the ratio of liquid to air.

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Mike Smith: So I think, I think having that perspective and being very appreciate the balance of all of this is the reality we’re facing but

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Mike Smith: I get really excited when I can get. And I call it the trifecta together to realize what great internal audit means for our profession.

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Mike Smith: The Trifecta to me is the board level executive level of across the enterprise and that audit leadership. Right.

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Mike Smith: And I say audit leadership, not just, CAE. Because I think we all know there’s times when that ca is really

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Mike Smith: Challenged by the connection with his or her direct reports and so having a not only a great vision.

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Mike Smith: But a great team and so that clearly starts with a strong CEO and what they’re doing to develop themselves, their teams, etc. They know you do a lot of that as well. But I get really excited when we can get those folks together to figure out, you know, to use the phrase, new ways to thrive.

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Mike Smith: And so if you look across what we do in the mandate, we have, if you go academically to, you know, to preserve value and to create value organizational value.

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Mike Smith: I think now, more than ever, we have an opportunity to really think through what that means to the organization today versus what it meant you know last year and

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Mike Smith: Most you know most agencies have some strategic vision strategic documents. Did you plan, right. That’s kind of table stakes, I’d say, but they were playing it down or

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Mike Smith: They haven’t really kind of refresh from a what I’d say a customer standpoint, like what is the customer of the value chain that we create.

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Mike Smith: An audit committee executive management, your own team, right, there’s a lot of stakeholders regulators for those industries, etc. And how does that and what should those individuals be thinking about as they recast what their vision is to be before

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, and I think it has I think it’s been changing in general. But I think this situation we’re going through just accelerates certain things. It’s almost like a porous gasoline on the fire a little bit

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Mike Smith: More peaceful probably

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Jason Mefford: More specific.

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Mike Smith: So I guess.

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Mike Smith: Probably

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Jason Mefford: For those that are you know i know it’s usually audio, but you get you miss the cowboy hat. Okay. All right.

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Jason Mefford: Love a Deep in the Heart of Texas. Okay, anyway. We got to get back right now the

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Jason Mefford: But yeah, because I think, you know, like you said about thriving thriving is such a great word and and I think there’s a lot of different you know pieces to this, like you said, the trifecta the board management audit right audit leadership.

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Jason Mefford: Right and and you know a lot of times, it depends on the organization each each group is kind of different, right, sometimes there may be a relationship issue with the board, sometimes there may be a relationship issue.

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Jason Mefford: With management, sometimes there may be a relationship issue within the audit leadership as well. Right. And so, you know, just like you said, you know, your, your friend who’s the fire, Captain. You know, if it’s good at home, it’s good at work. I think that’s

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Jason Mefford: And if it’s not good at work, it’s usually not good at home.

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Jason Mefford: If it’s not good at home. It’s not going to be not, it’s not going to be good at work, and I think this goes you know into one of our

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Jason Mefford: passions that both of us have is kind of the work life and the human aspect to it, but also as you were talking is

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Jason Mefford: You know when you, when you think of it kind of from a Trifecta standpoint if audit leadership is not going good.

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Jason Mefford: Then the relationships with those two groups is not going to go good as well. Right. So you think about it, even within the organization. If you’re having trouble with your team. If you’re having trouble managing yourself.

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Jason Mefford: Right. Well, good luck folks with trying to help manage the board and management, you know, as well.

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Mike Smith: It’s going to be dead.

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Mike Smith: That’s exactly right. And so one of the things I think about is

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Mike Smith: Is we all tend to shy away sometimes from a full kind of health perspective and and there’s plenty of views on whether it’s mental health emotional health spiritual health, physical health. And I think people gravitate mostly towards the physical health.

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Mike Smith: I’d say and but they’re all connected. And you can you can argue different ones have different levels and the individually organization, but I think you

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Mike Smith: Have to step back and think through

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Mike Smith: And how we’re doing across those different dimensions and I love the connection right of the health of one branch of the trifecta

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Mike Smith: And it being a mashed right being influencing influencing rather those other two. So I think for

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Mike Smith: For your listeners, I really challenge individuals to step back and see where they are kind of do a bit of a health check. Right.

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Mike Smith: And that could look personal that could look as a team, and where are we as a team. We just had a conversation with one of my team this morning that felt like we because of the code, we’d stopped meeting kind of allowing

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Mike Smith: Our the whole staff to get together.

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Mike Smith: Talk about what’s important to them and considering the social injustice is going on, considering the pandemic, considering the recession, considering

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Mike Smith: You know riffs that are with some of our friends like there’s a lot of burden, much less. By the way, we still have to deliver high quality product.

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Jason Mefford: But, but do at home alone.

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Jason Mefford: Do at home, not surrounded by anybody right or or the three plus roommates. You have all around the dining room table.

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Mike Smith: Right, or

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Mike Smith: Her you and I in our house and my daughter walks in and my dog. I mean, that’s just

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Mike Smith: Fine right but i think i think we need to spend just a little bit more time there and equip as leaders, the right tools for those individuals to drive forward. And so I think some of that may look

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Mike Smith: You know there’s there’s plenty of let me step back

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Mike Smith: So if you look at

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Mike Smith: How our colleagues and finance it HR name of function or think about how they are transforming their agenda that probably not thinking about the mental health as

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Mike Smith: As much, perhaps, which is maybe they are maybe they aren’t. But arguably that the operating model, they’re thinking about has, you know, at least a handful of dimensions and we tend to think people process technology.

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Mike Smith: I know

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Mike Smith: But what about the delivery model been

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Mike Smith: Working virtually. What about working in different locations. What about

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Mike Smith: What about the metrics and insights and what are we doing around data and how are we measuring ourselves or what about governance is the governance, the same as it was before, as it is now. And so I think we kind of

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Mike Smith: Expand Our

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Mike Smith: The aperture from people process and technology to think more broadly around like how to how to our other colleagues thinking about

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Mike Smith: Apart from this environment, how to transform how to create more value, how to deliver how to be purposeful, how to care for people. And I think you got to have

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Mike Smith: You know those three or four other dimensions added to your repertoire as you’re thinking through, where are we, how are we doing, what do we want to do differently. What’s the new way we want to

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Mike Smith: Thrive right in the near term, what actions do we want to take and how do we want to call them out.

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Jason Mefford: Well, and I think that’s important too, because it’s

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Jason Mefford: You know, like you said, you can take something like an HR function. Okay, they’re probably always

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Jason Mefford: Going to have been thinking about people’s well being a little bit more. Hopefully, because maybe that’s why they went into HR right were

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Jason Mefford: In internal audit finance compliance, you know, we’re, we’re kind of mainly get her done kind of, you know, rule. Check the box, whatever kind of thing, stay within your lane.

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Jason Mefford: And and that’s, that’s one thing that you know looking at some of these other dimensions.

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Jason Mefford: And just being honest and realize that you can’t fully separate your personal life from your business life. Hopefully, hopefully this, you know, like you said, if your daughter walks in.

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Jason Mefford: Whatever. Right. I mean, again, it’s like, well, oh my goodness, Mike, you have a daughter right i mean it’s it’s who you are right and

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Jason Mefford: And the personalities that people have, and in that whole idea behind because there’s been a lot of scientific research, most, most

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Jason Mefford: A lot of to most of the actual physical health symptoms actually have some mental or psychological and emotional basis to it. Right. And so if we

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Jason Mefford: You know, think that we’re audit robots and we just kind of, you know, we don’t have to deal with, or think about emotion, because we’re not supposed to do that right

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Jason Mefford: I said a webinar on this, folks. It’s like

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Jason Mefford: 95% of your decisions are made by the back subconscious part of your brain seven seconds before you consciously recognize it.

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Jason Mefford: You know you can argue with me. But there’s a lot of scientific research that proves it. So it’s like just admit that we’re emotional beings and allow people to be emotional, but to

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Jason Mefford: Know how to have emotional intelligence and regulate it to have resilience and teach people how to do some of that stuff.

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Jason Mefford: Because if not, honestly. Our job sometimes can get pretty pretty brutal

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Mike Smith: Well, I think that’s where you have to come back to, you know, for our

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Mike Smith: Our values have been distilled down to, and I’m from Texas, so I

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Mike Smith: This reference you might appreciate it more, but it’s the, the acronym. I remember is for better iced tea.

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Mike Smith: Because I’m in Texas, so

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Mike Smith: We all are here for better. Like, what are we going to do that drive something better. And the I integrity clearly having ethical decision making. See courageous.

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Mike Smith: Right, having the willingness to go into battle and and my one of my mentors used to say listen to client be empathetic about

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Jason Mefford: Their clients.

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Mike Smith: Whether, whether it be for the listeners, you’re

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Mike Smith: The oddity right

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Mike Smith: Or whoever that might be

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Mike Smith: And stand in the breach. Like, you may not be the person

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Mike Smith: To church all all their issues around that risk domain or that process or that step or that

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Mike Smith: Or at least be willing and courageous to stand in the breach. And then there’s is the idea of excellence right i mean

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Mike Smith: Clearly, we all want to be better. We want to contribute, we want to add value.

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Mike Smith: And then ultimately the tea together like there’s no one that’s going this profession. I love this profession because it, it requires you to work with.

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Jason Mefford: Others.

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Mike Smith: And that’s what

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Mike Smith: That’s encouraging to me. That’s how I’m wired and

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Mike Smith: There’s plenty of individual work and you can be an integral contributor

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Mike Smith: Magic is when you get

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Mike Smith: A bunch of individual contributors together. So as you go through this journey of like work and life and all these things. I think being anchored into the right values that those are the ones for me and for us but

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Mike Smith: Whatever those values are enterprise. It allows you

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Mike Smith: I think to frame up how to make those decisions. Better to move forward.

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Mike Smith: I mean that that notion of being task oriented.

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Mike Smith: Can agree with you more.

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Mike Smith: Like, that’s, that’s an

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Mike Smith: That is both a blessing and a curse like

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Mike Smith: Everything blessing of the detail and awareness and the connection with the curse of

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Jason Mefford: Kind of the balance of

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Mike Smith: Being only in that and then having kind of that top down reminder of what are we

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Mike Smith: What is the enterprise trying to accomplish.

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Mike Smith: For all the stakeholders.

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Mike Smith: Right, whether it’s be the growth agenda values agenda social responsibility agenda ESP image tons of things.

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Mike Smith: But let’s anchor into those things as

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Mike Smith: We move

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Jason Mefford: On especially kind of from a leadership perspective right you know because again that’s part of that.

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Jason Mefford: Trifecta is the leadership themselves and

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Jason Mefford: You know, realizing or being able to kind of set that vision, the strategic plan explaining to people, you know, that are that are working with us how what we do actually impacts.

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Jason Mefford: The organization, how it makes it better because because so many people, one of the one of the biggest complaints that people have at work.

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Jason Mefford: Is that they don’t see how what they do actually contributes, you know, they feel like they’re just kind of given a task and

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Jason Mefford: You know, it’s like mushrooms right you feed them shit and you put them in the dark. That’s what I was told. Right. You know that a lot of employees get treated like mushrooms.

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Jason Mefford: Right and and the problem is is after a while you don’t you don’t understand how you’re contributing it leads to some

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Jason Mefford: Dissatisfaction disengagement at work and then eventually people end up going off and doing something else, right, because

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Jason Mefford: They don’t understand how they fit into the bigger picture. They don’t feel appreciated and, you know, without having some of that in there. You know, it’s incumbent upon the leadership to actually help share that, you know, and be honest and real with people.

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Mike Smith: Right.

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Jason Mefford: As well.

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Mike Smith: I mean, you got to be able to bring your. I mean, let’s go back to the

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Mike Smith: Concept of the whole thing in my words like the whole self bringing your whole self to work like whatever that means. Right, let’s let’s focus on

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Mike Smith: Not just the diversity inclusion Jeanette, which I think is critical is overlooked in most organizations for a variety of reasons.

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Mike Smith: But clearly, one of them is because if we have different backgrounds. We’re going to have different origin stories that drive different perspective.

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Mike Smith: That’s what we need. And so if that’s the case, what does that mean for our profession specifically. So if we had Let’s present the idea of an internal audit generalist, is that the future. Well, we have even more generalists. I think that’s

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Mike Smith: Likely not the case. I

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Mike Smith: Agree. Right, we will have these levels of expertise. And so what if, as we think about our whole self. What about your personal interests, you know, auditor Joe or Joanna. Right. And those personal interest, maybe in

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Mike Smith: A risk domain or a way of interacting with the business. Perhaps you’re more emotionally intelligent than another person. Maybe you’re having a different role and so

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Mike Smith: I really am excited about the idea that if we do this right, we’re actually tapping into expertise that we don’t really recognize is the value and then I’m thinking about, you know, we were helping a CA with the auditor of the future program. I was really interesting.

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Mike Smith: And we all know about bias, but the similarity bias that was penetrating the team, meaning they were hiring themselves.

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Jason Mefford: Over

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Mike Smith: And over and over

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Jason Mefford: That’s been that’s been going on for a long time, that’s not new. That is no

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Mike Smith: No, but but while not being new. How many people have really shifted from that, how many people are doing their assessment centers, totally different.

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Jason Mefford: And I really

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Mike Smith: Not enough. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: I don’t think it’s even probably very many. I don’t know if you have any more evidence, but

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Mike Smith: Nothing statistical but supposition would say few

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Jason Mefford: Yeah. Few, few

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Mike Smith: premise was like listening to them. And these are some it was really interesting to hear some expertise again outside of just internal audit but applying it to our professional needs around if these are the types of

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Mike Smith: Future capabilities and expertise that we need to complement the core of who we are is in Toronto capability.

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Mike Smith: Then we need to think about how we assess them differently. How we search for candidates. How we screen candidates who screens candidates. How we get back together and challenge each other.

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Mike Smith: To contribute differently to that’s the right person. That’s not the right person. I think all if we can bring as leaders like that perspective together around the future auditor. Right. The, the idea of rethinking recognizing some gender bias, but actually doing something about it.

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Mike Smith: I mean, even just case studies.

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Mike Smith: But what if we just required case studies for every new hire I it seems like a pain in the ass. If you got to look at a bunch of case studies, but at the same time.

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Mike Smith: Maybe need to be doing that because you’re allowing people to create something and don’t we want people to be creating something problem solving and being critical thinkers like those are basics and can you do that in a

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Mike Smith: In an interview where you say, Tell me about your past and what’s the three things that you really require either, you know, those kinds of questions.

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Jason Mefford: Well, you can’t. And it’s interesting, too, that the when you go back to the recruiting process. I would actually advocate that any resumes have the name and any personal information removed from it because even the name

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Jason Mefford: That’s right, biases people unconsciously, they don’t they don’t realize it. And so if you’re going to assess someone, you know, like you said, certification where they went to school all that stuff may not

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Jason Mefford: Probably never has been, as important as we make it. It’s just an easy binary way of screening candidates.

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Mike Smith: That’s right.

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Jason Mefford: But like you said, you know, doing something like a case study, you know, even the difference of

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Jason Mefford: You know in the in the interview questions right there’s there’s situational

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Jason Mefford: There’s traits based interview questions. There’s attributes kind of

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Jason Mefford: based ones, you know, where it’s like, you know, you hear some of the stories of it’s, it’s something that that nobody would know. I think at Google question that I heard was

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Jason Mefford: Okay, imagine that you’re a washer, a little metal washer in the bottom of a blender and the blender gets turned on and the wheel, you know, the blades are going, how do you get out of the blender.

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Jason Mefford: Well, there’s, there’s no one answer to that.

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Jason Mefford: That’s that’s more of a of a reason to, you know, see how well somebody can take something that’s ambiguous actually apply it, understand it and kind of come up with an answer, right, it’s, it’s kind of similar to like some of the old IQ questions. How high is this guy.

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Jason Mefford: Right. Well, it depends on how you define this guy. Are you talking about the atmospheric pressure. Are you talking, you know, it’s like

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Jason Mefford: Hey, you want people that that are going to be able to think more but that’s going to mean that we do. We have to change our recruiting process, but we also have to change and not continue to hire

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Jason Mefford: The same people over and over again because I agree with you. I think the general auditor.

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Jason Mefford: While some are needed, there’s going to be more and more specialization.

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Jason Mefford: Which is going to also mean that there’s going to be more and more diversity within the audit team.

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Jason Mefford: And again, I’m not talking about diversity, you know, from an ethnicity standpoint but but diversity of personalities of ages of, you know,

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Jason Mefford: The social construct that we all bring based on our experiences and and the more, the less homogenous. The group is the more emotionally intelligent, we have to be to get along with everybody.

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Mike Smith: Right.

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Jason Mefford: And and to to use the strengths from everybody. Right.

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Mike Smith: Well, and people look at that and go, that just sounds hard. Right. Because now we had a bunch of people. And oh, but where are they located, they are they in person, but they were based here and

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Mike Smith: And and you got to go back to the adage of nothing and nothing good is easy, right. So, I mean, you get to. It’s going to take effort so

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Mike Smith: Why would we, if we see things that are valuable and the way you know, again, just the our teams are structured. Why, why wouldn’t we spend the energy because the things that are hard.

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Mike Smith: Could be exactly the right answers for what you want to do differently and so

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Mike Smith: You know, I don’t know if it was jobs or Google, but the old so at 70 2010 like how are you spending your energy around change and innovation, you know, 70% is around the core things are what you do, perhaps executing your

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Mike Smith: audit function. The 20% or Jason and the 10% are aspirational. And so I think we could apply that to all the dimensions, we’re talking about

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Mike Smith: What are the investment dimensions around everybody thinks we should go digital. So where are we going to spend all our dollars on technology and digital, how are we thinking about people.

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Mike Smith: How are we thinking about the types of risk for focus on. I think there was a study that

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Mike Smith: I don’t have the stats in front of me, but the premise was you know 96% of the risk functions were focused on 14% of the risk domain is that caused the biggest issues.

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Mike Smith: Right, and so the higher we rationalizing focus investments in time, effort, people to be able to do the things that really matter. It’s going to take some some energy

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Jason Mefford: Well, it is. And I think, you know, kind of back to that study that you’re saying if

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Jason Mefford: A lot of that again was probably unconscious bias by the risk people because they were more comfortable or they

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Jason Mefford: Understood, those, those 14 or 16% of the risk they had no idea that the other 80% of risks actually exist.

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Mike Smith: Right.

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Jason Mefford: Right. And again, it’s nothing about them. But if you’ve got a very homogenous team that thinks the same way has the same personality.

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Jason Mefford: You’re not going to have the best results. And like I said, it’s hard.

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Jason Mefford: But you know again studies on diversity of boards, right, the more women that are on and more minorities that are on those companies actually perform better in the long term than a homogenous boards.

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Jason Mefford: So there’s empirical evidence that it’s actually true. Right. But like you said, it’s hard. We got to actually do things consciously. It means, you know, we might actually have to develop relationships and get to know people on our team, instead of just treating them like some machine.

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Jason Mefford: You know, here’s your task list, you know, putting your 70 hours this week and

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Mike Smith: Right.

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Jason Mefford: We’ll see you next week. You

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Jason Mefford: Know,

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Jason Mefford: Right, that, that ain’t going to go over well.

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Jason Mefford: In the future, because

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Jason Mefford: The world consciousness, if you will, is kind of changing and this this whole maybe we can kind of talk as you know a little bit at the end here about this whole self at work, because I think that’s

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Jason Mefford: That’s something that’s coming. It’s been coming this way, we have to be more open and accepting of it because if we’re not will, you’re not gonna, you’re not going to succeed in the future.

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Jason Mefford: If you don’t allow people to be their whole self.

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Mike Smith: Yeah, that’s right. Well, and, and I’ll just tell a quick story about myself. You know, I’m a big cyclist like I love. I’ve been reading, reading, reading

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Mike Smith: Writing done a lot of reading, but I think racing bikes for about 30 years and during this crisis. I’ve been writing more because you know what, I don’t have to commute, you know,

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Mike Smith: 30 minutes each way.

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Mike Smith: That much time but I found it interesting. I did a few weeks where I take a lunch break and I go ride that listen to your podcast or somebody else’s podcast. There’s several I mentioned earlier.

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Mike Smith: And I found that I came back really recharge like the afternoon.

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Mike Smith: And it was similar to those times, and we would all go to lunch, right, we go to lunch and just we have a little business conversation, but maybe a little bit of personal conversation or something, expanding your just

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Mike Smith: Reset. And I find that to be able to bring our whole self story not promoting the everyone that needs to go ride a bike at lunch.

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Mike Smith: Especially when it’s 100 degrees in Dallas, but here it’s a lot of fun right to be able to find ways to recharge yourself. And that’s one of the ways I do it.

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Mike Smith: And it’s been great, because of the flexibility we have, but that allows me to have a different perspective to listen better to my team to listen better to oddities and clients right to

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Mike Smith: Lead better through and influencing my thinking little different and having a different perspective. And so I think is, is we really challenge ourselves, what does that whole self mean

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Mike Smith: Is it okay for me to tell people I go ride my bike at lunch. There’s a day when can’t believe you do that, why aren’t you doing X, Y AMP z.

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Mike Smith: So I think even in that conversation, you start to think about are we willing to explore what the merge of work life is it’s it’s kind of work life sometimes. Now I will get online. To be honest, I will get online. Last night I got one and send a bunch of emails like 1030 last night.

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Mike Smith: To no one that I expected return from but I had some time. I wanted to get some things out. It was really focused and alert and it made sense for me.

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Mike Smith: A couple hours earlier doing some other things from finance. So I think we’re gonna have to realize that

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Mike Smith: We’ve none of us have had an eight to five or nine to five or whatever job for more than two decades. Right. And this professional requires you to

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Mike Smith: Really gives you an opportunity to lean in at different times in different ways and contribute value in that way. So I think it’s important to think about the diversity which we use our own energies and how we recharge, to be able to be better and doing that.

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Jason Mefford: Well, yeah, because we have to do it ourselves right we you need to be responsible for doing it for yourself. But we also have to

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Jason Mefford: Allow others in the organization to do it as well. Right, so I participated in the mindful workplace summit, a few years ago.

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Jason Mefford: And, you know, the whole idea again that you know 20 years ago, people would have been aghast at this but large companies actually setting aside workspace.

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Jason Mefford: You know, for people to go in for a quiet room. Right. You know, in the old days. It’d be like, you don’t need to take a nap during the middle of work right or you don’t need to be quiet. You need to be out here working right.

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Jason Mefford: Or, you know, doing allowing somebody to do like yoga. You know in in premises during the lunch hour for those who wanted to go and do yoga together right little things like that that actually help recharge energize people

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Jason Mefford: In fact,

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Jason Mefford: I’m going to get the study wrong and which book. It’s actually from. But again, they’ve they’ve done a lot of research on productivity and you’re better we can only concentrate every about 20 minutes 20 to 30 minutes solid anyway.

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Jason Mefford: And so you’re better off to work in like a 15 minute increment with a 10 minute

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Mike Smith: Break right

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Jason Mefford: And so whether that break is getting up walking around going outside riding your bike for 10 or

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Jason Mefford: 15 minutes or whatever or, you know, reading a book.

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Jason Mefford: Right, doing, doing a Rubik’s Cube, you know, I actually have a Rubik’s cube on my desk, because it literally stopping and taking two minutes to manipulate that Rubik’s Cube actually

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Jason Mefford: Changes the hemispherical connections in my brain and kind of recharges and then allows me to actually get back to doing what I’m doing.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: And so it’s it’s all these little things and to realize that it’s okay to be yourself. It’s okay to bring your whole self to work because actually, that’s what makes us stronger to

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Jason Mefford: When it when everybody when we, when we rely on everybody’s strengths. Right.

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Jason Mefford: That’s, that’s how we become a better team.

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Mike Smith: And you realize where the challenges are, I think people become more open around where there are challenges and you find that

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Mike Smith: As we look and one of the another reason I love this profession is we get to serve right when we get to serve the board management, our teams at the breadth of impact we can have is if done right. That’s why I love what great internal, it can be for a company

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Mike Smith: It’s phenomenal and that that means that their strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats and all the strategic perspective, you may have, but to be able to make a list. I will make it so I’m a college dropout. Right. I don’t know if I’m going to tell you this, but

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Jason Mefford: What, how can you work at KPMG if you’re a college dropout.

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Mike Smith: I did go back actually

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Mike Smith: Drop Out drop in maybe

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Jason Mefford: I’ll get there we go there.

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Mike Smith: Like more of a V. Maybe you really know

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Mike Smith: But I find there so Kevin Farley was a roommate of mine, back in the day at Southeast Texas and and I’m sure he’s listening today but

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Mike Smith: He

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Mike Smith: He and I would have these, like, We gotta go study. Like, I know I can both of us, in essence, we’re dropouts, but we were back in and we were full tilt and we were getting this thing done and get it done well and works great, and

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Mike Smith: I got a job and all that kind of stuff. Rest history, but we used to do that like set the alarm. We did 45 minutes. By the way, because we we had short attention spans, but

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Mike Smith: 45 minutes and then like 15 minutes we dork around for, and it was amazing. Like we both did a heck of a lot better on our pursuits academically. And by the way, had some fun, you know, although not really quiet in the library at Southwest, Texas, we’re

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Mike Smith: In trouble. Occasionally, but it wasn’t quite well. But I think that’s really right and but what I find is that people don’t apply that outside of academics.

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Mike Smith: I don’t think people are applying that that professional aspects. So if you’re going to go write a report we reporting is, in my opinion, overrated.

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Mike Smith: And an overcome like overweight and from a like this is what we’re doing we’re writing a report. This is the most important thing that we do.

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Mike Smith: Is to way too heavily into it’s usually takes way too long. It’s a pain the ass like that’s that’s the stigma of reporting.

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Mike Smith: Reality is like when you’re going through challenges of you, whether it be whatever philosophy you have on Agile and all the different ways, you’re going to get work done ultimately we’re trying to drive an impact.

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Mike Smith: Like you’re trying to drive an impact how, how do you bring your best self, how do you, how do you collaborate with a business owner, how you do it real time.

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Mike Smith: How do you take breaks, let’s let’s really work on you know this one item really be the down for an hour or 45 minutes applying. That’s right. I think that’s really important to step back from especially for our

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Mike Smith: People that are earlier in their career. They’re being led by people that have been in this career for a long time and maybe there’s this dissonance barring a tournament, you were using previously.

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Mike Smith: Around

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Mike Smith: Kind of how people are driving and to be led when reality is there’s a much better way to work that they probably had in their academic environment, but they haven’t applied that professional

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Jason Mefford: Well, it’s funny because, you know, and be in our profession in general, most people’s personality is we don’t like change that’s that’s kind of what we were gravitated to this field. Anyway, right.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, is is risk averse don’t like change.

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Jason Mefford: And and so much of the time, like you said, we

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Jason Mefford: We have a hard time understanding why there needs to be changed, right. So again, you know, like when when we both got into public accounting. I’m sure your experience was like mine right I worked a lot of hours. So I was an external audit.

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Jason Mefford: You know, to begin with, and

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Jason Mefford: We’re talking, you know, 8090 hour weeks. Some we’re right and that was just expected that was what history said that’s what we did. Right.

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Mike Smith: Side, by the way, my first project was like nine of us.

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Mike Smith: In a room and no one in this podcast or not this is maybe except for you with micro fish machines.

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Oh, yeah.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah. Uh huh.

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Mike Smith: And it was all invoices and we, our job was to look through each one of those pages on a micro fish and then put it back in a box. We challenged

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Mike Smith: And find sales tax. That was our job. It was okay. And we were working seven days a week, to your point, like it’s, it was, it is hard work. That was kinda lame, in my opinion, but it was long hours for sure.

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Jason Mefford: Well, and in the, the idea that just because that’s what we experienced. I think that’s where as a writer great leaders are those who realized that the world is different now than it probably was before.

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Jason Mefford: And that have the courage to actually do things different and and and and be that positive change.

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Jason Mefford: You know, there was no reason like we had a stupid requirement, you had to come in on Saturday. And I remember one week I literally work 90 hours in the five days. So you do the math, I didn’t sleep very much that week.

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Jason Mefford: And then the manager still told me I had to come in on Saturday. And I’m like, are you kidding me, you work 60 hours. The last five, and I still have to come in on Saturday.

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Jason Mefford: Things like that, that just are silly. They’re silly stories that we’ve told ourselves of the way the world is most of the things that we believe that way, are actually not really true.

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Jason Mefford: And so having the courage to actually, you know, stand up and say, hey, we, we don’t have to do it this way. Hey, you know what, it’s okay if you take a 10 minute break every hour, I would encourage you to do it, you’re going to be more productive. Right.

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Jason Mefford: I would encourage you to, you know, go ride your bike during lunch or whatever it is.

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Jason Mefford: Right. Right. Or if you’re if you’re not a morning person. Sure, you can come in at 11 right but you’re still going to be working later. I mean, it’s

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Jason Mefford: You know, I’ve got one guy on my team he he sleeps during the day. Usually, so it’s almost like you know

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Jason Mefford: He’s, he’s halfway around the world. So we know that

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Jason Mefford: You know, I require that there has to be a certain amount of my working hours in his working hours to overlap.

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Jason Mefford: But that’s just from a training perspective, but he gets stuff done, you know, a two or three in the morning when I’m asleep right and and to realize that things like that are okay. Going forward, right.

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Mike Smith: So let me ask you this, we may be getting keep me honest on our time, but

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Mike Smith: Ca is what’s the biggest challenge you guys you’re hearing and I’d love to compare notes for seems like in all all this aside, like this. All we’re in, we’re in right. You and I are in

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Mike Smith: But there’s all these practical realities constraints, etc. What’s, what are the top couple that you hear most persistently leaders.

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Well,

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Jason Mefford: I think probably the, the two especially kind of in this

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Jason Mefford: Arena right now is we we tend to be victims of our circumstance.

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Jason Mefford: And so these two things that I that I hear over and over again are more people playing victim without really realizing it. And I know this is a harsh reality for a lot of people, but

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Jason Mefford: We all play victim more than we realize it. If you stop and think about an objective thing.

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Jason Mefford: But the ones that you always hear is I, you know, my budgets cut nobody will give me any money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They don’t value internal audit. I can’t hire people, most of the people that are doing that are are in that victim mode.

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Jason Mefford: The reason why they’re usually not getting it is because they don’t know how to make a sales pitch. They don’t know how they haven’t developed relationships with people.

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Jason Mefford: And and know how to actually use emotion. They’re not emotionally intelligent, they don’t understand how decisions are made.

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Jason Mefford: It’s so that’s that’s one that I i hear from almost everybody

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Jason Mefford: I mean there’s there’s rarely a chief audit executive, it goes, wow, I get paid way more than I should be and I have all the budget that I ever need. Right.

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Jason Mefford: Right, that’s so that’s one. Another one that I’m hearing to now, especially in this environment is

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Jason Mefford: You know, how are we going to do audits virtually, how am I gonna, how am I going to develop relationships, how am I gonna get to interview people and you know all this stuff that’s virtual now.

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Jason Mefford: Well, again, for the most part, folks. It’s just a different medium, you’re still doing the same things. I know you can still develop a relationship with somebody like we talked about at the beginning.

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Jason Mefford: Right. Mike and me right

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Jason Mefford: Exactly. You can do it. Yeah, but, but, so don’t don’t fall into that victim mode of thinking, oh, it’s different. I can’t do it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The medium just changed the principles are the same, just go out and do it right.

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Mike Smith: Right. You know, I think.

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Mike Smith: I hadn’t thought about those two from the standpoint of this this victim kind of the idea that victim like these are. I have a view of the constraints only versus if you ever seen Ender’s Game, which is

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Jason Mefford: A

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Mike Smith: Fun little movie about

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Jason Mefford: Fabulous movie and book.

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Mike Smith: And book right and whether it be audible or in print.

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Mike Smith: And it’s just like that, if, if, for those who haven’t watched it, it’s worth you know if you got some spare time and you like sci fi, but the premise is there’s clearly unexplainable constraints and victim scenarios with someone trying to basically address

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Mike Smith: Fear a global genocide and the sci fi dystopian future and he accomplishes that. But my point is that it was interesting because if you think about that. That was youth, right, that was individuals that were young, that were weren’t tainted in essence by

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Mike Smith: Adopting constraints of their environment. Right. And so that was the one. Those are the ones that are able to think faster.

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Mike Smith: Be more abstract and how they resource solutions, etc. And so what if that applied this now and to say that what if our younger generation.

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Mike Smith: Are early career auditors were given the challenge. Say, listen, this is the budget constraint, you have right or this is the

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Mike Smith: Permission constraint, you have or whatever the constraints are. That’s why these are just not good. So solutions. Let’s around focusing on the constraints and more about

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Mike Smith: We want to deal with the, was it the four mix. I think was a form x and Ender’s Game babies.

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Mike Smith: But dealing with that in goal. And so I think one of the exciting things about right now is we

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Mike Smith: As leaders have the ability to empower our teams to pull all this together right to be their whole self to bring a different perspective to use their

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Mike Smith: Perhaps fresh perspective in a way to solve a problem, recognizing fully the constraints that are time budget scope, whatever they are.

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Mike Smith: To be able to format from the virtuality standpoint, to be able to solve a problem. So I think that’s just

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Mike Smith: I hear those a lot to you, Jason. So I, I couldn’t, I couldn’t have accurate in and clear. But I think there’s something there that if we pull this together could create a much more exciting outcome.

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Jason Mefford: Well, you can actually because Ender’s Game was a great example of gamification to

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Mike Smith: Oh, yeah.

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Jason Mefford: The kids didn’t actually know they thought they were playing a game. They didn’t realize I

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Jason Mefford: Don’t want to give too much away from people, they’re going to read the

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Jason Mefford: Book, but I think

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Jason Mefford: The kids, the kids didn’t know what they were actually doing.

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Jason Mefford: Right, but they they used gamification as a way as well. Right. So just like you said, you know, here’s our constraints, how are we going to, how are we going to

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Jason Mefford: You know, do this play a game with, how can we best use this because, because sometimes I’ll still get people that that you know I

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Jason Mefford: I mean, I’ve been through all the executive ranks and now I’m really a CEO okay and and I get some people sometimes it say well you know internal audit should just have an unlimited budget because we’re so important or risk management should have an unlimited budget and it’s like

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Jason Mefford: You folks have never run a company

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Jason Mefford: If you think that because there’s always constraints on resources.

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Jason Mefford: That’s right. And so you always have to make make a decision that’s in the highest and best use for the organization and from an investment perspective, the return so

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Jason Mefford: But yeah, you can do some things creatively, to be able to make the most of it. Show your stewardship.

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Mike Smith: To the board into management by

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Jason Mefford: How well you’re taking taking care of those resources and actually start thinking of yourself as an investment center instead of a cost center.

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Jason Mefford: You start thinking of yourself as an investment center right you start acting like an investment center and showing the results, then the CFO is going to start seeing it was an investment center. That’s right.

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Mike Smith: Yeah, the tagline for my team is this internal audit reimagined

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Mike Smith: What if

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Mike Smith: Imagine if like as a way to introduce ourselves as a mantra to to kind of move towards something that could look very different, but I love the storage should come it doesn’t matter, its internal on insert HR it

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Mike Smith: Anybody Georgia business unit Korean but whatever it is, like we all have to be good stewardship idea like, what’s the best way to steward your resources personally and professionally your time, etc. But be willing to move forward. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: Great stuff. Great stuff.

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Mike Smith: Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: And all week. I can keep talking all day but

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Jason Mefford: People got to get back to whatever they’re doing

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Jason Mefford: We are, we do as well. But Mike. Thanks for coming on and talking I every, every time we talk, it’s, it’s kind of fun because like I said

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Jason Mefford: We we’ve

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Jason Mefford: I think I think view, a lot of this stuff and the whole the whole whole self at work is to me. It’s an important thing. That’s why I know you’re still doing a lot more of the practitioner, you know, stuff of actually

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Jason Mefford: You know, helping actually get the audit plan done. I know get shit done at work.

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Jason Mefford: Right, we’re now I’m focused more kind of on that whole self and more of the psychology and mindset and the leadership and the transformation and growth from a, from an individual perspective.

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Jason Mefford: But yeah, just love love the discussion today so

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Mike Smith: Fun stuff fun stuff. Thanks. Jason for letting me share some thoughts and then just been hearing your views as well. And this time has been helpful and

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Mike Smith: I think all of us are, have a great opportunity. And today, tomorrow. The next week. It’s just a matter of finding those things in there that really can can move the needle personally and as a team.

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Jason Mefford: Well, I can and is if you can reimagine it

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Jason Mefford: Mm hmm. You can make it happen.

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Jason Mefford: Right, because everything that is is created in physical form is first created mentally because every everything in this world is mental

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Jason Mefford: And maybe I’ll get into that on a deeper podcast later.

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Jason Mefford: We don’t have time for that today, and it might take a couple, a couple to get through. But anyway, but it’s it’s

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, so just like you’re trying to help you know reimagine what internal audit could look like everybody

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Jason Mefford: Out there that’s listening. Try to reimagine what it could look like or how things could be different, where you’re at, to just start thinking about it ideas will come to your head and then start taking some action and make it different.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah. Good stuff. Alright.

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Mike Smith: Alright, man.

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Jason Mefford: Well, thanks Mike.

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Mike Smith: Yeah, thanks for the time today. Appreciate it.

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You bet.

Fire & Earth Podcast E90: Improving Relationships with Self Love

As humans we are all in relationships … and honestly some are better than others. Some are easy and others take a lot of work. One common theme behind that quality of your relationship is the relationship you have with yourself.

In this #fireandearthpodcast episode we dig into how improving #self-care, self-love can actually be a huge driver into the quality of our other #relationships.

Listen in at: http://www.jasonmefford.com/fireandearthpodcast/

Transcript

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kathygruver: Hey everybody, welcome back to the fire and earth podcast, I’m your co host Kathy, Grover.

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Jason Mefford: And I’m Jason Medford

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Jason Mefford: And we’re just going to leave it there for today’s episode.

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Jason Mefford: Thanks for

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Jason Mefford: Thanks for tuning in. We’ll see you next time bye, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh know of course we’re not going to do that. No, we

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Jason Mefford: You know, before we, before we start recording. We always start talking about stuff and the and the whole idea of relationships has kind of come up and around

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Jason Mefford: You know, self care self love as well. And so we’ll see kind of where this goes. But, you know, as I’ve kind of been looking. We were talking a lot of relationship.

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Jason Mefford: Problems come from self love issues as well, right, that a lot of times, you know, and again, you’ve probably heard the world mirrors, you

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Jason Mefford: And so if you’re dealing with relationship issues. It’s probably your even having a relationship issue with yourself.

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Jason Mefford: That is mirroring itself into your relationships with other people. So you know so much of our heartache and and was come back to us, not really loving ourselves as much as we should. And I know even for me that’s smacked me good, the last few weeks.

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Jason Mefford: So we thought we we talked a little bit more about some of this and where it kind of goes so yeah

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kathygruver: Absolutely, and I was again before we go on air. I was talking to Jason about my coaching and how I didn’t set out to be a relationship coach, but suddenly three of the clients that have just come to me are dealing with relationship issues.

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kathygruver: And it’s interesting because

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kathygruver: When I’ve talked with clients about relationships. There’s like a third that totally blames the partner.

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Jason Mefford: There’s a third that totally blame themselves. I will horrible person. I don’t deserve look and there’s a third that kind of puts their sleeves over their hands and goes, I don’t know. You know, so it’s this, this, you know,

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kathygruver: It can’t be all the other person’s fault. There have to take responsibility for how you’re contributing to that, whether it’s how you’re responding or reacting, whether it’s how you’re communicating

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kathygruver: I’m a huge fan of horrible Hendricks his book, getting the love you want it should be on every shelf. I hate the word should, but shouldn’t be on every shelf of anybody that has been will be, or is, in a relationship.

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kathygruver: Amazing exercises some amazing insight and one of the things he says, which I sort of went is every criticism, your partner has of you probably hasn’t negative truth into it.

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kathygruver: And I went, oh crap. You know, so if you can take away the whether it’s the sarcasm or the abuse verbal abuse aspect of it or the uptake.

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kathygruver: That delivery away and distill it down to that nugget. There’s probably a nugget of truth there so we can actually learn from what our partner is telling us or yelling at us. So taking a look at ourselves to tell you’re yelling

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kathygruver: Yelling telling you, and you’re just coined that phrase. So taking a look at sort of jumping into the middle of this, but taking a look at what they’re saying to and about you and seeing asking what is true in that what is true that that I can improve myself and make better

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Jason Mefford: Well, and even, you know, again, because, like we said, a lot, a lot of those probably criticisms that your partner or the other person that relationship may be seeing

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Jason Mefford: You know are going on within you. They are going on within you and then they’re getting reflected out and, you know, again, kind of a smack in the face to me was, you know, stopping and actually listening to the words that were saying about ourself.

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Jason Mefford: Okay, now I’ve always been one to

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Jason Mefford: To use some self deprecating humor, right, because I figure it’s it’s

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Jason Mefford: It’s a nicer, you know, because you’re not targeting someone I, you know, sometimes the comedians that just really roast somebody and just get in on him. It’s like

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Jason Mefford: To me, that’s almost like mean man you’re being an asshole quit that, you know, kind of thing some people really get on that. I don’t as much. So I tend to sometimes do some self deprecating humor.

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Jason Mefford: But the problem is even that self deprecating humor, there’s truth to every joke right and so again if I if I’m saying some of those things, even if it’s meant to be funny. How many of those things do I actually believe right or when someone gives you a compliment.

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Jason Mefford: Do you discount the compliment. Do you denigrate yourself slightly in the way that you respond

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Jason Mefford: You know as well that is we start kind of looking and thinking about this, you know, again, a lot of our relationship issues are probably caused by relationship issues with our self first

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kathygruver: Well, and also so much really does come from, how things are modeled at our relationships from our parents.

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kathygruver: Because when we’re a little kid, and we start to see that independence. So we jump off our mom’s lap and we head into the other room, we kind of look back to see what they’re going to do.

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kathygruver: The smartest thing a parent can do is to say, yeah, go, go check that out. Have fun. I’m going to be right here, when you get back

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kathygruver: That develops a really strong sense of security that developed a strong sense of independence. That’s great. Typically, that doesn’t happen. It’s either one of two things.

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kathygruver: Either your parents totally gone and you can do whatever you want and then you don’t get that attachment

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kathygruver: Or your parents like Oh, be careful. Don’t go in the ocean. We have, you know, I watched a friend of ours.

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kathygruver: With our kid at the beach and anytime the wave at Santa Barbara. We don’t get big waves. You’re not gonna be swept away little loop up on the up on the beach and then

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kathygruver: You’re going to get wacko. Be careful. Are you okay, you know, and they were so over protective and now I’ve seen these kids grow up and I go, I watch that form. I mean there’s just

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kathygruver: So much

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kathygruver: Dysfunction in relationship because of that overbearing paranoid nervous. So the develop these attachment thing. So are you need for attention. Or are you like

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kathygruver: Leave me alone. I’m going to be reading my book, you know, you can watch this kind of happen and how your parents treated you growing up.

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kathygruver: The other thing that I found fascinating that that horrible Hendrix just said was, when we’re babies every need is filled from the outside.

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kathygruver: We cry. Somebody figures it out. They make a face at us. We laugh, we scream, they have to get that need met. And so, as an adult, we still have that part of our brain that goes

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kathygruver: And we expect somebody outside of ourselves to fill every need. We have

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kathygruver: Because that’s that baby part of our brain that’s like ice cream, you better figure it out.

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kathygruver: And you can see that I said that my own behavior like I’m feeling poop you who can make me laugh. Today, you know, rather than finding a way to self soothe and fill those needs in ourselves, we tend to look outside for us.

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Jason Mefford: Well, and that’s that’s why the relationship issues are so hard for us to deal with right because, again, if we’re

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Jason Mefford: If we’re always looking outside for that validation

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Jason Mefford: Right so so mommy needs to tell me that I’m a good boy, you know, you know, so that I feel proud of that or you know the the job that I have the title that I have the whatever that I did.

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Jason Mefford: provides me with that external validation that I am important I am loved if we’re always relying on that external validation, the minute it goes away.

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Jason Mefford: We’re fucked. Right. And so again, that’s why your relationship with yourself. The self love the self care that we’ve talked a lot about

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Jason Mefford: Is so important because what it should be as regardless of what’s going on in our external world. We’re still taking care of ourself internally.

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Jason Mefford: And if we’re not doing that if we’re not, you know, being kind to ourselves, you know, one of the, one of the questions in coaching, you know that comes up a lot of times when you’re coaching, somebody is

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Jason Mefford: People will talk, then they’ll say something about themselves. Right. And so you kind of turn it around and you go

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Jason Mefford: Okay, what I just heard you say was this right now, I want you to think of a child, you know, maybe your child, maybe a niece and nephew somebody that you love. Would you say that same thing to that child that you just said.

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Jason Mefford: And of course, people are like, hold. No, I would never say that to another human being. Right. And then it’s like, why are you saying that to yourself. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: Why are you saying that to the most important person in your life right and we’re not we’re not talking about being egomaniacal men equal magical, you know,

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Jason Mefford: Psychotic kind of personality, but if if we don’t know how to soothe ourselves and and derive our self worth from internal yep AND BEING WHO WE ARE authentically, then we’re never going to find it outside. Right.

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kathygruver: Oh, absolutely. We have to. And you and I talked about this is all

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kathygruver: About finding the right partner. It’s being the right partner.

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kathygruver: And you know the whole. What was the Jerry Maguire thing. Have You complete me

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kathygruver: I’m so torn about that because no one can complete you however with what I know about child development and how we look to partners to fill what our parents didn’t give us in a way we feel like they are completing us

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kathygruver: They’re giving us that piece that our parents didn’t give us or

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kathygruver: They’re exactly mirroring what our parents gave us because we still are working out that bullshit drama, you know, my mother was never around. So now I have a boyfriend who’s distance, you know, that kind of stuff.

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kathygruver: My dad was abusive alcoholic. I don’t know why I keep finding abusive alcoholic men.

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kathygruver: I do you know

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kathygruver: And it’s so much easier to, you know, to look at other people’s relationships to God’s messed up. But we have so much trouble. Looking at our own stuff because you know you can’t see the ones that you can’t see the smiles on your own face or something like that.

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kathygruver: But yeah, it’s about figuring out who you are and going back to pretty much everything we’ve said in every episode. What do you want

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kathygruver: From yourself. What do you want from yourself and how do you get that. Do you meditate. Do you

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kathygruver: Do affirmations. Do you ask other people, the good qualities of you so that you can magnify that out. There’s so many different exercises you can do to help fill those voids inside yourself because if we’re looking to the outside to fill it it’s it’s not going to work that way.

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Jason Mefford: Well, I’m because you brought up the point about, you know, people in their relationships because I’ve seen this, you know, relationship breakup. Right.

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Jason Mefford: And so people go back to being single. Right, whether it’s divorce or boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever it happens to be right, you get out of a relationship, a close personal relationship with someone

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Jason Mefford: And we no longer feel complete. We feel like you know I in You see this so much of the time I see it and other people. I saw it in myself actually after I got divorced, you know, as well, is that

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Jason Mefford: You know, a lot of times to sit there and go, oh, woe is me, will anyone else ever love me. Will I be able to find someone that loves me.

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Jason Mefford: I want I want

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Jason Mefford: I want to kind, loving partner right and you hear people saying these things, you know, and I’m so sad because I’m alone. And I just want to kind, loving partner. It’s like, listen to yourself.

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Jason Mefford: If you want a kind, loving partner, then you need to be a kind, loving person who a kind, loving partner would be drawn to right because so much of the time it’s it’s this self loathing woe is me.

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Jason Mefford: That makes you miserable and sad to be around, you suck the energy away from everybody else.

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Jason Mefford: So, guess what, if you’re in that state, you’re not going to attract a kind, loving partner because they’re going to want to get the hell away from you. You’re like, leave me alone, you’re, you’re, you know,

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kathygruver: Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s so funny when I was growing up in Pittsburgh. We used to go to the mall and walk around the mall because there was nothing else to do.

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kathygruver: So we would weigh out troll those troll. Troll around was up in the food core and we’d like look at clothes and never really buy anything but we look for boys. Basically what we’re doing.

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Jason Mefford: I was

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kathygruver: Always Boy crazy when I was a kid. So my girlfriend and I would go and we’re walking around the mall and I, you know,

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kathygruver: beautiful girl. Big smile. Gorgeous long hair she’s she was gorgeous but anytime guys would stop and talk to us. They totally ignored her and they all put their attention on me.

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kathygruver: Know, of course, her view of that was prettier than me. You knew which I don’t think I was

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kathygruver: But the reason was, I was confident and I was smiling and I was friendly and I was open and she’d stand like this.

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kathygruver: Assuming no one wanted to talk to her. Well, if you present yourself like that, of course, no one wants to talk to you. She didn’t look approachable. She didn’t look friendly friendly. She didn’t look

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kathygruver: Like they were going to have a good time talking to her, and she never got that. But isn’t the outside or I could step back and go, Well, do you miserable like

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kathygruver: You know, so it is projecting that and again you don’t, don’t be this egomaniac like the best thing ever.

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kathygruver: But you want to present yourself like you’re friendly and that you love yourself because people are attracted to that people are attracted to that that

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kathygruver: Feeling of wholeness that you present. And if you look like you’re looking for someone to fill every need, that’s only going to attract someone who

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kathygruver: Probably has the same wounds and is also just as needy and I don’t wanna say just functional because we’re not all dysfunction know maybe we are all

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kathygruver: Actually recently reframe everything that but you’re not going to attract the partner you want if you go into it, looking for someone to fill all these needs doesn’t work that way.

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Jason Mefford: Well, and I saw it for myself and I’ve seen it in other people as well is that, you know, when you finally get over your pity party bullshit.

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Jason Mefford: And and you actually say, Okay, you know, if I want to kind, loving part, I’m just, I’m just using this as an example. Right.

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Jason Mefford: If you want to kind and loving partner then start becoming a kind and loving person. And the minute that that you start doing that and you start changing yourself on the inside.

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Jason Mefford: Then that confidence comes your vibration and frequency goes up, right, people are attracted to you because like you said, you know,

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Jason Mefford: There’s a great line in the movie or a in a song. It was something. I’m going to give it a little bit wrong. But, you know, you’d be so much prettier. If you smiled.

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Jason Mefford: Okay. And, you know, again, it’s you can be the most gorgeous person in the world. But if you’re kind of miserable to be around, you’re not smile and your whatever

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Jason Mefford: No matter what is going on, physically, people are not going to be attracted to you as much as if you’re confident. If you’re loving if you’re outgoing if you’re interesting right

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Jason Mefford: It’s it’s those kind of things that actually attract or draw people to you. And so the more you can be that the more you will attract people right

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kathygruver: Absolutely. And we do attract people to help us finish playing out those dramas, like I said, of what our parents did or previous relationships, you know, we tend to keep getting in a relationship with the same basic person over and over and over again. And it’s either our mother or father

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kathygruver: Because it helps that little kid nos go well I’m going to finish playing out that drama and that’s just sort of what we do.

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kathygruver: Once you’re in that relationship that only works for so long. Typically before somebody gets unhappy somebody starts to wander somebody

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kathygruver: So then at that point. If you find ways and you find exercises and you find things that can strengthen that relationship. So you’re both getting your needs met, then you can actually form that into a really long term loving healthy relationship and not just there.

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kathygruver: Temporarily to help you fix the BS from your parents know that it takes work relationships or relationships or work and people who like I just want a relationship that’s easy. I don’t know what that looks. I mean, I’m in a relationship right now is easiest that’s ever been ever

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kathygruver: But we still both work on our communication. We have a list of bylaws. It started out to be a joke, which we ended up

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kathygruver: Why would you not do I had made a joke. One day about out read the bylaws these like I’ve never seen these bylaws. And so we actually sat down and wrote bylaws, because why wouldn’t you

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kathygruver: You know, we want to know where we stand with each other. And we’re constantly working on communication and carving out time and, you know, we work at it.

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kathygruver: In an easier way than I have in previous relationships, but it still takes effort. You can’t just float along in a river, and I think that’s a relationship.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah relationships to take work right.

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Jason Mefford: But yeah, and it’s, it’s, you know,

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Jason Mefford: Most people have some relationships issues, right, like you said, it’s I’m in an easy relationship right now to you know and i and i think

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Jason Mefford: Part of that is because we’re both easy

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Jason Mefford: Right and and we kind of know and respect the other person.

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Jason Mefford: And we don’t we don’t have written bylaws, but there’s kind of a

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Jason Mefford: separation of duties, if you will, right, that I’m primarily responsible for certain things and alleys primarily responsible for other things and and we kind of have our own space and we give each other space.

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Jason Mefford: You know we communicate, you know, as well. But, you know, ultimately, and I think it’s, it’s this way and in any relationship, you have to be confident in yourself and taking care of yourself. You can I can’t make someone else be happy.

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Jason Mefford: You know I can do things to show love to try to, you know, encourage some of those things. But if that person doesn’t feel that love for themselves.

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Jason Mefford: Right, we have to eat for ourself.

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Jason Mefford: Is, you know, as well. One of the ways I’ve heard it, you know, described. And so, you know, for a relationship to

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Jason Mefford: Kind of, you know, develop evolve move forward. Both of the people have to be communicating have to be evolving have to be doing what

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Jason Mefford: Each of them individually needs.

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Jason Mefford: To do.

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Jason Mefford: In order for the relationship to continue to move forward. Right, and that’s where a lot of times relationships have have issues is

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Jason Mefford: One partner may be kind of moving forward transitioning maybe have changed their mind or have some different views than they did at the beginning and the other person either doesn’t want to change or doesn’t want to accept those changes in their partner.

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kathygruver: Yep.

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Jason Mefford: And that’s usually what ends up you know i know that was the case for me with my first marriage.

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Jason Mefford: I, you know, and again, it was, it was so hard for my ex wife to understand why you know when we got married in our early 20s, that how come in my 40s. I would change my mind about certain things.

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kathygruver: Right.

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Jason Mefford: You know, it’s like

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Jason Mefford: Jason. I know, I know. You know, it’s like, well, I’ve, I’ve never liked broccoli.

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Jason Mefford: Okay. As a kid I didn’t like broccoli, I’ll eat it sometimes now because I know it’s healthy but it but it’s as silly as that right if I hated broccoli as a kid.

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kathygruver: You should hate it now.

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Jason Mefford: And then if I become an adult and I like broccoli. I just changed my mind. What’s the big deal right but people people evolve and change. And so relationships evolve and change over time as well.

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Jason Mefford: Sure. And in, you know, at least for me, most of the relationship issues that I see people having. That’s one of the big things behind it, too. Yeah.

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kathygruver: Yeah, exactly. And you know I am all for relationship coaching or couples counseling or whatever you want to call it, and I see so many couples were in this typically

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kathygruver: Typically, the wife is like a we’re having issues. I’m unhappy. We should go to counseling. And the guy says, yeah, you go, I don’t have the problem.

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kathygruver: I see this so many times. And it’s like, Okay, you both have to participate in us and I had given one of my coaches and exercise to do with her boyfriend and I said, Look, you guys both have to do this.

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kathygruver: If he’s not up for doing this really simple exercise. It’s going to strengthen your relationship so me one that’s an indicator that maybe he’s not as into it as you think he you know

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kathygruver: Presenting such an easy exercise that will actually make him happier he should I believe he would be willing to jump at that opportunity if you value taking care of that relationship.

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kathygruver: But so often. I see. And again, it’s typically the guy that’s like, yeah, you go to the therapist. I’m fine.

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kathygruver: Because they don’t want to look at their own stuff. Looking at our own stuff is horrible. It’s scary. And it’s shitty and it’s

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kathygruver: Ugly and smells bad. And I mean, it’s like, of course, we don’t want to hold up that mirror and actually look at what we need to fix because it takes a lot of work. It can be very frightening for people and

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kathygruver: To me is like, Well, why would you not want to fix that, you know, it’s like I love as much as I hate looking at all that stuff. I kind of like it.

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kathygruver: Because then you get it out, you know, and you can fix it. It’s flicking the light on the middle of the night and going, who should look at all those roaches.

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kathygruver: No, I can’t get rid of the roaches. If I don’t

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kathygruver: Look on the light and. That’s what to me what relationships, the joy of doing, is it shows us our stuff.

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kathygruver: That we can then work on so that we’re better people so that we’re healthier and more successful and we get all those things we say we want out of life and out of relationships and out of love.

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kathygruver: That’s for relatively short relationships are great for that. I think it’s more difficult to do by yourself. I think this is one of the reasons we get in relationship with people is to help hold up a mirror so that we can be better to me, my opinion.

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Jason Mefford: Well, and it’s, you know, I think another another thing that I’ve seen a lot to with with watching people kind of go through relationships is

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Jason Mefford: Sometimes relationships have an end.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, and they need to have an end, you know, I think that that we get the you know fairy tale, you know, Disney movie, you know, Princess and they lived happily ever after. Forevermore. You know,

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Jason Mefford: And and relationships serve us at different points in our life. And again, especially when you have people that are

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Jason Mefford: You know, developing and growing which we all should be right that eventually maybe a relationship doesn’t serve you. And again, it may not be a romantic one, it may be a relationship with a family or friends, you know, I have I have friends from high school that

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Jason Mefford: You know, whenever we’d get together haven’t since I moved down to California haven’t seen him very much. But you know when I would when I would get together with them. It was, it was great for like the first half hour hour

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Jason Mefford: And then after that we just didn’t really have anything to talk about and and it’s not that I you know I don’t love these guys you know they’re my friends from growing up. I’d still do pretty much anything for some of these guys.

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Jason Mefford: You know, because I, I do think of them as brothers in that way, but

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Jason Mefford: We just don’t have anything in common. Now we’re on a different point in our life and different in it and it’s okay it’s nothing about them. The relationship we had when we were teenagers was exactly the relationship. I needed as a teenager.

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kathygruver: Yeah, exactly.

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Jason Mefford: You know, but now as a middle aged man it’s it’s a little bit different and and and it’s hard. I think sometimes because I’ve seen I saw this in myself. I knew

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Jason Mefford: At least four to five years, if not seven years before my divorce.

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Jason Mefford: That

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Jason Mefford: The relationship was probably over but I kept trying to hang in there for my kids and for all the other bullshit excuses that

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Jason Mefford: The society gives to us. Right. And again I it was my path. I had to go that path. I learned things on those intervening years but I see this so much and people that I talked to

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Jason Mefford: They know a relationship is over, but they’re afraid to end it.

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Jason Mefford: And this is where our self love kind of comes back into it again. Right. Yes. Okay. If you stop yourself if you really love yourself. Right. Can you say I love myself to you, can you can you say I love myself. First off, right. I love myself.

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kathygruver: I love myself.

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Jason Mefford: And you can you say that 20 times to yourself in the day, or do you feel

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Jason Mefford: Like, okay, well, then maybe you start to start saying that more to yourself. Right. Another question is, again, if, if you’re in a relationship that’s no longer serving you, or really anything that you’re doing. Another question you can ask is, if I really loved myself. What I do this.

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Jason Mefford: And so again, you know, if it’s maybe a relationship is over the person is abusive emotionally, physically, whatever.

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Jason Mefford: If you stopped and were honest with yourself and said, If I really loved myself. Would I allow this person that I’m in a relationship with to emotionally abuse me right go back to that question, we said before, right. How would you advise a child or someone else that you loved

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Jason Mefford: Yep, and we should be, we should be giving that advice to herself, if we really love herself and in sometimes loving yourself means doing some of those things that feels hard that are scary.

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kathygruver: Very hard. And I think part of it is that one person feels responsible for holding the relationship together or they feel responsible for the other person’s happiness. He’ll be so upset if I leave or she’ll be devastated. If I go, okay.

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kathygruver: Or the guilt guilt and fear to huge motivating things guilt and fear, the fear of not having enough money OF HOW AM I GOING TO RAISE THE KIDS MYSELF. Where am I going to live the guilt of

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kathygruver: Oh her family will never forgive me if I go, What will my friend say all you know all that kind of stuff. And I’ve watched people go through that I’ve watched me go through parts of that as well.

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kathygruver: It does come down to the self love and to stepping into that position of power.

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kathygruver: And saying, I’m not going to be here anymore and it doesn’t have to be some melodramatic reason that you’re going. It could just be that you’ve drifted apart.

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kathygruver: You know, after 30 I have changed so much in the 50 years I’ve been on this planet, obviously I’m not a kindergartner anymore. You know, I don’t think that doing a duet with Eddie Van Halen would be the greatest thing is still pretty great.

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Jason Mefford: Still be pretty great pretty

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kathygruver: Jealous. Put that back on the list. Okay, but it’s like things that I valued even 10 years ago.

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kathygruver: I don’t anymore. I have grown and move past that and I’m a completely different person and not every relay. I agree with you. Not every relationship stays. I think we get in relation to

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kathygruver: Help us to grow to evolve to learn things to move forward. And I think people come into our lives exactly when needed.

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kathygruver: And they stay for some indeterminate amount of time. And sometimes it is forever. I have clients who have been together 2030 5060 years and they’re still vibrant and happy and healthy together.

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kathygruver: And I’ve had people in their 80s, say, God, I wish I would have left him 40 years ago I can’t leave now. You know, it’s like, wow, you know,

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kathygruver: You have to make whatever choice is going to work for you and you have to determine how much work that you want to put into

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kathygruver: salvaging something that may not be salvageable it only you know that and only that’s an individual relationship thing.

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kathygruver: But it does take work and it does take effort and both partners have to be engaged in that

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kathygruver: Both partners apps. I mean, if you and I weren’t communicating the way we do and weren’t sort of divvying up though I’m not great on the marketing like you are but divvying up the task and this this relationship without work.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it’s interesting, something that you said to is, you know, people come into our lives. And so we’re not we’re not just talking about romantic relationships here, but obviously that’s

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Jason Mefford: When people talk about. I have a relationship issue with that usually. That is what they’re talking about.

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Jason Mefford: Right, but it can be with anybody.

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Jason Mefford: But, you know, people, people come into our lives exactly at the time that we needed to we learn what it is that we need to learn and then they move on.

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Jason Mefford: They may move on through death. They may move on through, you know, relationship just doesn’t work. Somebody moves. Whatever reason people come into our lives and people leave our life. Everybody well

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Jason Mefford: But there’s one relationship that you will always be with your whole life. And that’s the relationship with yourself. You can’t get away from yourself.

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Jason Mefford: And so if you don’t have a good relationship with yourself. If you don’t really love yourself if you don’t think that you’re worthy and exactly perfect exactly the way that you are at this point in time.

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Jason Mefford: Then you’re going to have a hard time living in your relationship with yourself, until you decide that and realize that we don’t need that external

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, the power comes from internal

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kathygruver: Absolutely, a very wise woman one said, no matter who I’m sleeping next to, or who I’m sleeping with I always have to wake up with myself.

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Hmm.

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Jason Mefford: Very good quote

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Oh, that was that the wild women.

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Jason Mefford: Like I’m gonna have to start using that one.

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kathygruver: I wrote, I wrote a play when I was living in LA and and one of the characters. Was this

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kathygruver: Her goal was just to sleep with everybody. She wanted to experience everything and that’s

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kathygruver: The end of her monologue. She says that it’s like no matter who I’m sleeping next to her home sleeping with I have to wake up with myself.

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kathygruver: And it’s about that self love and that valuing self regardless of who’s in your sphere, you know, regardless of the input that we’re getting from the outside. Because if we’re relying on people outside of ourselves to make us happy to give us that identity. We’re going to be disappointed.

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kathygruver: So we have to herself, and once again, we’ve

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kathygruver: We’ve, we’ve gone through a bunch of time.

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Jason Mefford: Well, no. And I think actually that’s a great you are a wise woman Kathy i think that’s that’s a, that’s a fabulous.

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Jason Mefford: Probably one of the reasons why I love movies and other stuff so much to is because you know as an artist, when you when you put together and you get aligned like that, no matter who I sleep next to or sleep with

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Jason Mefford: I wake up to myself in the morning, right, kind of a thing that is profound. And that’s, you know, again, what we’re

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Jason Mefford: What we’re talking about, focus, focus internally. You know, we’ve talked about why why we get so much validation from our external environment it’s programmed into us.

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Jason Mefford: But the more that we can actually really love ourself and and be confident in our relationship with ourself.

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Jason Mefford: A lot of these other relationship issues just kind of go away because will create boundaries. We won’t allow people to treat a certain ways will change ourselves will attract those other people into our life that need to be in our life at that time. But it all starts with us.

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kathygruver: That’s like love this conversation because we’ve talked about self care. We’ve talked about the five love languages in regards to our self.

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kathygruver: So we can go back to those episodes and realize this has been a theme that runs throughout this because, you know, we’re always with ourselves so we might as well. Might as well get along.

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kathygruver: All right. Oh, I love this conversation. We never know where these things are going to go. But yeah, I like where that went. So that was good.

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kathygruver: Excellent. All right, I’m Kathy Gruber. I can be reached at Kathy group com

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Jason Mefford: And I’m Jason method I can be reached at Jason method calm, so go out love yourself, and we’ll see ya on the next fire and earth podcast.

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kathygruver: Yeah.

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See ya.

E96: Successfully Using Data Analytics with Joe Oringel

In this #jammingwithjason #internalauditpodcast I speak with Joe Oringel about some of the challenges #internalaudit is facing when it comes to #dataanalytics. It turns out one reason people struggle is not understanding the seven body of knowledge areas we should be focusing on and determining where you want to be.

We discuss personnel issues (e.g. do you hire a data scientist and teach them how to audit, or train internal auditors how to be a data scientist) and how to plan out your multi-year path on incorporating more data analytics into your audit activities.

If you are working to improve data analytics in your internal audit department, you need to listen to this episode.

Joe Oringel is the Managing Director of Visual Risk IQ. Learn more at: http://visualriskiq.squarespace.com/

To get a copy of the data analytics maturity model discussed during the episode, send an e-mail to [email protected]

Transcript

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Jason Mefford: Welcome everybody to another episode of jamming with Jason. Hey. Today we are going to talk about a topic that I know many of you may be struggling with or thinking ah

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Jason Mefford: I got to add that to my audit plan. I got to figure out how we’re going to deal with data analytics. Okay, so today I have my friend Joe Oren go with me and he is the Managing Director at visual risk IQ and like me. Joe is a rock star, but just in

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Jason Mefford: Data Analytics. So welcome, Joe.

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Joe Oringel: Hi, Jason.

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Jason Mefford: Hi. Now I know you know as, as we’ve talked before. Lots of people are trying to start doing data analytics, because everybody knows they’re supposed to do it right.

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Jason Mefford: But there seems to be some common things that end up being kind of roadblocks to getting people started

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Jason Mefford: So I want to kind of go through and talk about that with you today, but maybe first just kind of get give a little brief introduction

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Jason Mefford: You know about kind of what you do, because I know their visual risk IQ you guys do some things different than other people do. So maybe just kind of explain kind of what you guys do and how you help people as well with us.

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Joe Oringel: Sure. Well, thanks. Thanks for asking. Um so visual risk IQ were

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Joe Oringel: Quite a bit of a unicorn, if you will. Jason in that we bring together both the the business Akamai, and also the technical and data acquisition

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Joe Oringel: And finding those two different skills in the same individual is somewhat like finding a unicorn. I hear that from my from my recruiter friends who who always want to know who’s a really solid it and data analytics on it, senior

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Jason Mefford: Women and they run all of those skills in one person.

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Joe Oringel: Talk all those skills in one person. So what we do is we help people see and understand data, but particularly we help finance and internal audit people see and understand data.

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Joe Oringel: I’m the, the proud father of a data scientist, a budding data scientist. My son is a college junior, and he and I will be at the MIT sports analytics conference this coming weekend.

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Joe Oringel: Looking at data helping tell the coach at his school infield shift swing don’t swing curveball off speed fastball, I would tell you that there’s a domain.

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Joe Oringel: Knowledge of baseball that taking the best data scientist from our team who’s not into baseball and putting them on that team would not yield good results. And you asked about people.

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Joe Oringel: The big thing that we see organizations do is they lean too much toward one or two of the the skills that are needed in the portfolio and they lean toward those at the, at the expense of having other other skills on the team. Mm hmm.

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Jason Mefford: Well, because I think it’s interesting, you know, like you said, you bring up your, your, your son, because I know we talked about him before. It’s kind of like

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Jason Mefford: You know, for anybody who’s ever watched the movie Moneyball right. It’s kind of like that. Right. You know what, and, but, but, as you said, right, it’s

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Jason Mefford: It’s not just, you know, the fact of being a data scientist or understanding you know how to manipulate how to analyze data.

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Jason Mefford: But you have to have a base understanding of the area that you’re looking at as well. Right, so that’s that’s why you’re talking about kind of bringing the business and data act.

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Jason Mefford: Together, because I think you know like we took. We talked before we started you know there’s there’s some different blocks that people have, and one of them is around personnel.

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Jason Mefford: And you know, I think what you just kind of described in you know even like you said your recruiter friend, you know, hey, I need somebody that’s strong and it audit and data analytics and it’s like, well, you’re probably not going to find one person with all of that stuff.

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Joe Oringel: They need great interpersonal skills they need to be a really good project manager change management strategic thinking and they need to be up on all the latest technical tools tablo Power BI and also open source tools like R and Python and

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Joe Oringel: The latest machine learning algorithms and you just kind of laugh and you think you’re going to find all those things in in one

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Joe Oringel: And that are

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Jason Mefford: My

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Joe Oringel: My background is internal audit. First I lead data analytics for a fortune 100 company when I was in charge of what we call integrated it auditing. I was moved cyber and data center security guy, but I was also the the data.

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Joe Oringel: The data analytics person. And what I learned pretty quickly, was I didn’t even think I could be good at both of those.

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Jason Mefford: So I

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Joe Oringel: Quickly hired strong data center it general controls person underneath me, man. I moved almost exclusively toward financial and operational auditing what I call auditing with a computer.

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Jason Mefford: Instead,

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Joe Oringel: Of a computer right it automates me is auditing all the computer and it or data analytics is more auditing with the

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Joe Oringel: Computer to do the math, the science, the manipulations, so that the auditor pollution from the population of data.

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Jason Mefford: Well, yeah. And so you know i again i mean i’m putting myself, you know, back in my chief audit executive role right so

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Jason Mefford: You know, if I were doing it right now to try to give people some, you know, ideas or tips to kind of take away right

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Jason Mefford: If you want to start doing data analytics, you realize are probably need to realize you’re not going to find one person with all of the skills that you need.

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Jason Mefford: You’re going to need people that have the business and the auditing side, but the but the data acumen side of it, too.

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Jason Mefford: Is, is there kind of a rule of thumb, because I know you guys work differently with companies to which which I actually

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Jason Mefford: Really appreciate it and it’s kind of my philosophy to more of the teach to fish and send it just coming in and doing everything for you, but

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Jason Mefford: Is there kind of a rule of thumb. I mean, if I if I have an audit department of say 10 or 15 people, you know,

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Jason Mefford: Is there, is there some point when it’s like okay, it makes sense for you to hire somebody maybe who’s, who’s more technical as a data scientist.

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Jason Mefford: On the team versus, you know, where maybe that’s that’s a skill. You just have to outsource but you you know you’ve got your auditors that kind of understand the business side and the auditing.

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Jason Mefford: You bring in that technical expertise. If you need to, but maybe kind of talk about some of that and what you’ve seen successful for companies to do

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Joe Oringel: Certainly. Well, what we’ve done is we’ve got a whole body of knowledge.

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Joe Oringel: Is basically seven different areas that we think

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Joe Oringel: An organization needs.

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Jason Mefford: To

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Joe Oringel: Have skills on their team as it relates to analytics and sevens, a long list, but let me let me go over them here quickly.

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Joe Oringel: Um, several of them are typical audit kinds of skills, project management good communication skills and change management, sort of a strategic thinking

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Joe Oringel: Those three different areas, project management communication and and change management strategic thinking if you’ve got those three skills as the baseline.

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Joe Oringel: Then you’re looking to layer on top of them. Some data Ackerman, and specifically the domain expertise of finance and

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Joe Oringel: Internal audit, but the domain experience of your industry, your company, things like that, from a technical skills. Right. So from for my project management.

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Joe Oringel: Communications communication is change management strategic thinking the middle layer of the sandwich, if you will, is the domain expertise of finance and internal audit and then on top. The, the next three layers are data acquisition

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Joe Oringel: Statistics and also visual reporting that presentation layer of turning the spreadsheet into pictures and even among the data science community, you will find data specialists who are stronger or less strong

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Joe Oringel: In the data acquisition data prep versus statistics, the math and the visual reporting I’m quick to see to feed to my 20 year old. He’s way better at statistics and mathematics even than, than I am.

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Joe Oringel: But being better at math doesn’t necessarily make him stronger at some of the data acquisition, it’s needed in in our world, or even some of the visual reporting that I think is really the big change in technology over the last five or eight years.

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Jason Mefford: Well, so from that, from those seven areas you can really see kind of how it

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Jason Mefford: It builds upon each other, you know, like you said, you’ve got like this baseline area, then you’ve got kind of, you know, these domain domain expertise and then you’ve got kind of the

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Jason Mefford: Acquisition statistics and like the analysis and reporting that kind of go over the top of that. So, so if I’m building. I need to make sure that I’ve got that baseline first

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Jason Mefford: Before I really try to jump in to just go hire somebody or just decide, hey, I’m going to start doing data analytics, because everybody is and it sounds really cool. If the baseline. It’s a very probably not going to be very effective. Right.

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Joe Oringel: Exactly. And one of the, one of the questions that we get all the time is, are we better off hiring the data scientist and teaching them auditing.

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Joe Oringel: Or are we better off hiring the auditor and teaching them the the data science and typical politician or auditor. I think the right answer is it depends.

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Joe Oringel: And it depends on the other, the other skills of the individual brain we work with plenty of organizations who have hired the the data skills first and our teaching the auditing.

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Joe Oringel: And those, those, those organizations and have hired they’ve invested in the person’s areas where they need to improve and they’ve thrived in in those roles.

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Joe Oringel: Likewise, we also work with people who have the finance and audit domain expertise and we add or layer. The, the data science on top of their fundamental

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Joe Oringel: Business and an audit accurate when it works both ways. And if I were going to say, which would make me pick one. Joe, you only you only get one choice.

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Joe Oringel: I would say hire the individual with the stronger interpersonal skills right

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Joe Oringel: Okay you trust from a project management from a communications from a change management standpoint, and if you trust the data scientists

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Joe Oringel: In a personal skills more hire them and teach the auditing, or if you if you trust the, the auditors interpersonal skills and may they’re showing an enthusiasm and a genuine interest.

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Joe Oringel: In learning the data science, then yes, the data science can be taught as well.

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Joe Oringel: When I care more about or the personal attributes, who is somebody who’s going to take feedback. Well, who is somebody who who is skeptical, who has an enthusiasm for learning.

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Joe Oringel: And is self aware this is what I’m good at this is what I need to do to improve and that they’re willing to invest and shore up the skills that they might need.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, so it’s interesting because I, I do have my own personal opinion or predisposition. But, you know, like you said not to not to sound like a politician, but it does depend. It depends on the person.

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Jason Mefford: Right. I mean, so if you have somebody who’s a good auditor that you think is, you know, has these good interpersonal skills and also

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Jason Mefford: Can learn the well, then sure, you know, maybe go ahead and invest in that audit person if you can hire you know a data scientist.

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Jason Mefford: It’s usually I think probably easier to teach a data scientist, how to audit than an auditor. How to Be a data scientist because I think there’s a lot more body of knowledge.

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Jason Mefford: behind that. But like you said you’ve got to be careful about the interpersonal skills because I’ve worked with some really technical people

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Jason Mefford: And I’ve got an IT auditor that just jumps into my mind from before guy was brilliant at what he did, but he would sit over in the corner cross legged on the ground.

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Jason Mefford: very introverted very awkward dealing with people. And so, you know, could only use them for specific things he would not be somebody

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Jason Mefford: Right, that that I would have given more responsibilities to because he didn’t have those interpersonal skills, but he was really good at a technical thing. So you do have to kind of consider both sides of that well.

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Joe Oringel: Then, like, like I mentioned, I came into data analytics from audit first with a strong foundation of coding

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Joe Oringel: layered on top of my undergraduate accounting degree my business partner is a data scientist, first and foremost, came up through the it ranks Chief Technology Officer He’s clearly been data first. We started working together 15 years ago inside of PTC

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Joe Oringel: And his project was to recommend technology to the firm that would help our internal audit practice thrive. And the first question was, So what’s internal audit.

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Joe Oringel: In 15 years ago, I can still remember him asking what’s the difference between internal audit and external audit he understood

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Joe Oringel: You know, external audit opinion and sign off on the, the annual 10 K and he knew that that was usually back then. I think one of five or six firms that

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Joe Oringel: That was going to sign off on the opinion he didn’t exactly understand the difference between internal audit and external on it. So what I would tell you is

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Joe Oringel: If you’re a chief audit executive trying to build analytics capabilities on your team, you can hire almost anyone and work with us to accentuate the positive skills that they bring

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Joe Oringel: And to work with us to shore up the areas that may be new to them. And if what they need to work on our data acquisition and statistics, then our project will have a little bit more, maybe even a lot more Kim Jones than or Intel

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Joe Oringel: Yeah but but if you if you’ve hired a really strong data scientist and you’re teaching them internal audit, they’re going to see a little more Joe and a little less camera, David. Yeah, yeah, which

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Jason Mefford: makes total sense. And so, like you said, I mean, that’s, that’s one of the first blocks that a lot of people have is trying to figure out the personnel.

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Jason Mefford: Issues. And so, like you said, there’s kind of these seven areas. Make sure you got your baseline.

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Jason Mefford: Then you got to start figuring out, you know. All right. Do you have somebody internal do you hire somebody, how are you going to going to go about this, but

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Jason Mefford: It takes some time. You know, to go through this as well. So that’s another thing I want everybody to realize is like

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Jason Mefford: You’re not just going to, you know, snap your fingers and all of a sudden the month from now you have this, you know, kick butt kind of data analytics thing going on. It takes a while to do right

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Jason Mefford: Now, another one. You know, I know that that a lot of people seem to struggle with is getting data. So maybe let’s let’s talk a little bit about

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Jason Mefford: That because, you know, I know. That was one of the issues that I used to have, you know, many years ago because we couldn’t get some of the data.

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Jason Mefford: That we wanted to actually analyze, right. So, so what are some of the challenges that people have there and maybe some things they can do to help actually get data so they can actually analyze it.

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Joe Oringel: Sure. Um, what can we can we talk about your, your challenge Jason with getting data.

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Joe Oringel: We tend to break up a challenges into one of two buckets. Right, it’s a it’s a technical challenge. I don’t know what buttons to press. I don’t have the data dictionary from SAP, then I have a data dictionary, but it’s in German.

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Joe Oringel: I don’t know what these these tables are. I know I want to look at payroll data but i’m i’m not sure which payroll tables, I need to download that. That’s a technical problem, right.

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Yep.

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Joe Oringel: And then there are also what I call organizational or maybe even political problems, and that is that an auditor.

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Joe Oringel: Ought to be able to go get the data themselves, right, our charter allows us unfettered access to the

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Joe Oringel: Company’s books and records, certainly, nobody would quibble if you went to the head of HR and said that you wanted to look through some files you wanted to

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Joe Oringel: Look at employment practices or hiring practices they would let you look through the paper files to the extent that your organization has paper files.

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Joe Oringel: They would let you they would let you look at that information. But as soon as you say, I want to download

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Joe Oringel: All of the personnel records on to my auditor laptop, then all of the sudden HR start saying, but but but you can’t have this or it’s sensitive or

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Joe Oringel: Or things like that. So, so in the challenge of getting data do ask yourself, Is your problem, political, and that you’re being blocked from getting the data because of policy or security protocol or some other non technical

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Joe Oringel: Problem.

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Joe Oringel: Where are you being blocked from a truly technical problem, right. The, the payroll system is supported by a vendor, the only

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Joe Oringel: Way we get data files is if we open up a support ticket and the vendor bills us $300 an hour for making the file available and I’m concerned, Jason, the file that you’re asking for may take them days and days.

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Joe Oringel: Programmer time to get the data and does audit have a blank check to get the data file that you need for the audit. Again, that’s more of a political or an organizational problem than necessarily a technical

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, so it’s interesting that you bring that up because you know again in my career, I’ve experienced both of those right and and, especially, you know,

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Jason Mefford: Because I remember we had one where where we were. We needed to access certain records for some different investigation work that we would do.

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Jason Mefford: And you know, we just pretty much couldn’t tell them why. But it was, hey, we need x, y, z. And I remember you know there was a manager that in the IT department that all of that stuff kind of went through.

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Jason Mefford: And his first pushback was no you can’t really have access to that. That’s confidential. I can’t give you that.

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Jason Mefford: You know. So then again it was kind of the easy thing of Well here’s the audit charter that says we can do it and tell you what, let’s have a meeting with the CIO and and

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Jason Mefford: He’ll make sure and, you know, clarify everything that, yep. When Jason sends you a request, you know, you have my approval to do that. Right. So that was a fairly easy.

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Jason Mefford: Organizational thing for me to deal with. But I would guess, especially now with all the privacy concerns that you know it departments are probably, you know, tightening down even more, because again, you know, it’s like

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Jason Mefford: I remember the old there was a story of a an external accounting firm to be not mentioned that accidentally left a CD of data of all of the high wealth clients for a private bank in the in the seat back cover or you know pocket of an airplane now.

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Jason Mefford: So there is some of that stuff that we have to deal with. And I’m guessing, people are experiencing privacy push back now even more because of some of the breaches. Right. Absolutely.

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Joe Oringel: You know in the in the short time since you and I have been speaking today I’ve got a text message here from a client will we be available to help them talk with HR about data redaction

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Jason Mefford: And and the

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Joe Oringel: technical problem, the political problems that are disguised as technical problems or vice versa can often be overcome with data redaction

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Joe Oringel: Capabilities right we we do this just to limit the liability of our firm we have no interest if you’re doing a payroll audit. We don’t want to know the names and addresses and the salaries.

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Joe Oringel: Of all of the people that are on your HR master file. We are content to tell you that row number 40 703 has a overtime compensation that is higher than their base salary.

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Jason Mefford: So you probably have an issue.

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Joe Oringel: And you might look at the scheduling system and make sure that all of the overtime is bonafide but we don’t want to know their first name, last name,

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Joe Oringel: Address cell phone number. I’m in that particular circumstance we would probably mask or redact the Employees. Name build our analytics to compare over time to base pay

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Joe Oringel: Show you the outliers and then on your computer, not, not the consultant computer

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Joe Oringel: But on the employee issued computer, we would show you how to update our analytic update our dashboard, so that your list of transactions to investigate.

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Joe Oringel: Might have that person supervisor or might have that person’s department or cost center, but we can build all of the the mathematics together to identify the outliers without our staff ever having to touch truly sensitive information.

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Joe Oringel: So again, let’s separate the technical problems from the political problem. And often we can put in some controls that get people comfortable with the organizational or the political so that the technical can be overcome.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, I think that’s interesting. Sometimes what appears at first to maybe be a technical issue may be more of an organization or political issue that we have to deal with. So

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Jason Mefford: I think separating those is good. And also, I think, on the technical side, you know, we already talked about how you know maybe sometimes

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Jason Mefford: The data that we want isn’t available in the way that we thought it might be right. Like maybe maybe the data has to get pulled from

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Jason Mefford: You know, like your example of, well, it’s a third party. They’re going to have to go do a bunch of development work because maybe the fields we need are there, but they’re in three different tables or something like that. So we have to

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Jason Mefford: Be able to pull everything together into one. So there’s that side of the technical that we have to deal with. But I think too that there’s probably this other side to which is sometimes we don’t know what we’re asking for

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Jason Mefford: Because I know I’ve had that a few times in my career where, you know, we thought we were asking for one thing.

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Jason Mefford: But it really wasn’t what we wanted, as well. So you have to, you know, probably some of that comes back to our understanding of it to be able to get the right data that we need by knowing what to ask for right

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Joe Oringel: What one of the very common things the way that we typically engage with our clients is through what we call a data discovery workshop in in a

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Joe Oringel: Day to a day and a half of often in person time, what we’re doing is we’re asking the audit team, and even the the client area. What are the business questions that we want to know the answer to.

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Joe Oringel: Right. Is there, is there anybody who’s on the clock. But I’m perhaps there’s no evidence of them working. Is there somebody who there is evidence of

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Joe Oringel: Them doing work, but for some reason the time and attendance system says that they’re not working right. That’s what we call wage theft, your, your ogre of a boss says punch out

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Joe Oringel: But keep keep working. Keep sweeping until the restaurant is clean. Keep vacuuming until the retail stores spotless that’s wage theft. The, the pay theft is where

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Joe Oringel: You leave for the day and ask your buddy punch me out at the end of the day, I’m a fact. But the brainstorming what questions are we looking to uncover

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Joe Oringel: In the audit. What do we want to know the answer to that happens during brainstorming. But then we’re also looking inside the data dictionary at the tables at the columns.

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Joe Oringel: What are the digital evidence that somebody was doing work in the hospital. What are the tables that are the digital evidence that somebody was in the building. Maybe I need badge data.

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Joe Oringel: Together with pay data to see if I’ve got a problem in in those examples in the data discovery we connect the business questions to the digital data.

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Joe Oringel: And by having some real digital data in the discovery session, we’re able to identify what charts and graphs can practically be developed, given the information that you

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Jason Mefford: Want i think that’s that’s probably one of the most important steps is to be clear on that. To begin with,

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Jason Mefford: Before you ever go try to ask. Ask for stuff right because it’s if you don’t, if you don’t know why you’re asking for the data or are the questions you want answered by analyzing the data.

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Jason Mefford: Then you’re never going to know which which stuff to pull right and especially as we said, you know, with, with some of the

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Jason Mefford: issues around, you know, political or organizational issues of getting the data we need to make sure that we really are only getting what we need to have, you don’t need a full download of the payroll master file.

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Jason Mefford: There’s certain fields, you probably need but you don’t need the whole thing. And like you said, you know, you don’t need names and addresses and everything else.

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Jason Mefford: Some identifier, so that you know you know or can go back and figure out what line 47 is but but a lot of this stuff you don’t probably need. So you got to be clear on that. To begin with, and in something like this data discovery workshop that you go through

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Joe Oringel: Very much so in, you know, back to back to how we work with what organizations often find is in a really thoughtful data discovery session with us where we link.

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Joe Oringel: The, the business questions to the digital data we can answer 80% of the questions with two tables or with three tables.

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Joe Oringel: The last 20% of the questions on the audit plan may require multiple additional data sources to be appended or to be gathered to those first few

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Joe Oringel: We there’s an expression I I like and don’t like in the same breath, which is don’t boil the ocean and

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Joe Oringel: You certainly can learn data analytics techniques with just one or two tables build the capability build the confidence of your audit t

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Joe Oringel: By showing them how you’ve answered several important questions with analytics and scope out perhaps two or three of the the additional questions of it requires

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Joe Oringel: And especially difficult to get ahold of data source scope those out for the follow up. But let’s go in, get out be agile development illusions, with a very finite list of data sources and that often is a strong recipe for success. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: Starts start small. Start slow and then go from there, which is always the best idea.

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Jason Mefford: Because then you get those those small wins along the way. Now you know i know we kind of mentioned earlier on, but kind of wanted to maybe kind of wrap up on this too, because

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Jason Mefford: You know I I sometimes get the sense of people think, oh, you know, data analytics, I can just kind of, you know, start snapping my fingers and boom, it’s going to be done, but

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Jason Mefford: This is more of like a multi year kind of plan. And I know, I know there’s a resource that you guys kind of walk. Walk clients through to help them kind of understand this and think about

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Jason Mefford: Which areas to focus on to. So maybe just kind of talk talk about that a little bit, because as we said, you know, it’s some of these small steps. So what are some things people could start doing on their path to get to where they ultimately want to be

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Joe Oringel: Sure. Well, this is feedback from a, from a client actually that we met with last week, he’s

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Joe Oringel: Now chief audit executive at a third organization since we began working with them 15 years ago and and he thought we would be even more successful and help more CA’s explain to their audit committee.

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Joe Oringel: How they were going about data analytics that they were going to invest in a relationship with the data analytics consultant being us, but that the audit committee should not expect data and Nirvana.

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Joe Oringel: Is three or six months after the completion of a single project or even two or three projects. So we had built for them a maturity model kind of across the top.

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Joe Oringel: Five different stages. Anything from ad hoc to repeatable to schedule to Continuous Auditing and monitoring, but not just having those five steps because there are certainly other

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Joe Oringel: Other models that you can get out, find online from the firm’s from the software firms that have these these different levels of maturity. The back to arm acquiring the data or

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Joe Oringel: Writing your scripts or writing your audit report and having your audit report reflect the the data analytics view that the one through five maturity probably varies

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Joe Oringel: Both from a people standpoint, a process standpoint and a technology standpoint. So we built a

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Joe Oringel: Three or four page maturity model that put some words in the boxes of each of those five different levels of maturity.

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Joe Oringel: And our CA’s advice for us is to share the maturity model with others, CA please let them do a bit of a self assessment. Right. Which of these areas.

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Joe Oringel: Are they strongest with today. And importantly, where do they see themselves in six or 12 or or 18 months and as you and I were were talking before

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Joe Oringel: Getting started here on the podcast. You can’t move from level one to level five in 90 days all of these, these different areas. You’ve got to have

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Joe Oringel: A measured approach on how you’re going to move forward. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: Well into, you know, just, just for anybody who’s listening that maybe isn’t familiar with maturity models. Right. I mean, because like you said, you know, you usually they’re five steps, you know, from

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Jason Mefford: Whatever they call it ad hoc up to optimized on the top end. But what you guys have done is actually gone through and kind of had layers. Right, so that, again, you can think about

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Jason Mefford: Well, where am I at on this maturity model visa v. My people, or you know the process, the technology. Some of these different aspects that you can actually consider

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Jason Mefford: Because what’s important and how you usually use them is find out where you’re at right so you can go through and kind of self assess yourself.

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Jason Mefford: Figure out where you’re currently at and where you would like to be

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Jason Mefford: And I’ll tell you the top five is not where you want to be on all of them. You’ve got to figure out, you know, where the right point is. But then what you’re what you’re able to do as it starts to give you a project plan.

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Jason Mefford: At that point, because if you score. No one maybe on people and you want to be two or three

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Jason Mefford: Maybe within two or three years. Well, now you see the gap you know the difference of what you need to do. Right. And at that point, then you can actually start making the plans and start working

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Jason Mefford: Towards it because I love what you said, don’t, don’t expect that you’re going to have data Nirvana three to six months. Not gonna happen. It’s gonna take a while. It is very much so.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, so this is grimy and like you said, you know, this is a great you know tool for kind of

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Jason Mefford: You know, people to kind of self assess and I think this is kind of generic sized, I believe, to you said right is this is something that we could offer to give away to people that listen that actually want a copy of this so that they can go through and take a look at it to

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Joe Oringel: Certainly, you know, we’re happy to send it to anyone via email that drops us a line.

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Joe Oringel: And will not only send it back to them but but certainly spend, you know,

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Joe Oringel: Half an hour or an hour, getting their feedback on it. Right. What, what words do they want to put in the boxes.

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Joe Oringel: To the name. There are different, different words that belong in the box based on their company or their industry or or their company size we’re always interested in having our

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Joe Oringel: Feedback on the artifacts that we’ve built for other client assignments to have the those artifacts live and flourish and

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Joe Oringel: Adapt for for other organizations. So yes, happy to share this this model and will will certainly provide a no cost consultation for anybody that wants to ask us some Q AMP a

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Jason Mefford: Questions about

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Joe Oringel: Our model and feedback on

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Jason Mefford: Well, thank you. So I’ll make sure I’m put stuff in the show notes about that. But what’s, what’s the best email. What should they email if they’re if they’re interested in it.

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Joe Oringel: Sure. Well, our company is visual risk IQ so simply info i n fo at visual risk iq.com. And again, we’ll put that in the show notes as you suggest, and folks can can find it, and we’ll send it back out to them with a, with an offer to to have that new cost consultation.

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Jason Mefford: Well, perfect. So Joe, thank you know we’re kind of wrapping up on our timer. So we’re going to kind of

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Jason Mefford: But, but just to kind of, you know, again, give, give a summary and thank you you know again for being willing to

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Jason Mefford: To share that model with people that listen, you know, sending the email info at visual risk IQ com and you can get a copy of that. And again, Joe’s also

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Jason Mefford: You know offered to sit down with you for a few minutes and actually talk about it, see what you think and get your feedback and trying to see where you’re at, as well. So

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Jason Mefford: We’ll have that included down below, but

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Jason Mefford: You know, again, everybody if you’re if you’re interested in getting started in data analytics, you know, today we’ve talked about a few things.

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Jason Mefford: You know some of the different roadblocks, if you will, that people have around, you know, personnel issues you know the right kind of people that you need on your team.

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Jason Mefford: To how you actually get or acquire the data and then thinking about it kind of from a multi year plan standpoint, where you are now where you want to get to

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Jason Mefford: Because like you said, it’s gonna it’s gonna take you a little while to do it. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. But Joe, thank you.

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Jason Mefford: You know, for. Come on. We’ve known each other for quite a few years and it’s nice to kind of reconnect and and let

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Jason Mefford: You know, people hear, hear your knowledge because again I love what you guys are doing over there in the way you’re you’re actually really helping people improve what they’re doing.

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Jason Mefford: And make that knowledge resident within their team. Yeah, you know, ultimately, you guys kind of work yourself out of a job, which is, you know,

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Jason Mefford: It’s good, it’s good, it’s good. But it’s bad for business at the same point. But anyway, so

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Joe Oringel: It’s, it’s good for business. I was saying yesterday, you know, we’re not looking for a badge and a cube and a desk at our clients.

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Joe Oringel: Audit teams, but we what we want to do is help the people that they do have that have a badge and have a desk.

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Joe Oringel: help them get better at analytics and to be successful in their role and to do that very often, you need a coach, somebody who knows you.

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Joe Oringel: Somebody who’s been on that journey. And that’s, that’s what we we bring to folks that we work with, is that experience and that on the job ad hoc coaching as it relates to analytics.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, and really kind of filling in the gaps, if you will, like we were talking about before when we discuss personnel.

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Jason Mefford: Excuse me, to make sure that you have, you know, people on your team that can actually implement implement and go forward with this so

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Jason Mefford: Joe again thank you and

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Jason Mefford: We’ll probably have to have you back in the future. I’m sure as well because there’s a lot to talk about here. But with that everybody we’re gonna sign off for the for today and we’ll catch you on the next episode of jam with Jason, have a good rest of your week. Thank you, Jason.

Fire & Earth Podcast E89: The Simple Business Method with Natasha Mitchell

What if business could be simple? Wouldn’t that be great?

Actually is can be much simpler when you follow the Simple Business Method developed by our guest Natasha Mitchell. In this #fireandeartpodcast episode we get into how you can make your business simpler by using Natasha’s approach.

Listen in at: http://www.jasonmefford.com/fireandearthpodcast/

As a special bonus you can also download a copy of the S.I.M.P.L.E Business Method – Downloadable Blueprint at https://www.inspireanddrive.com/simple-blueprint–fire-and-earth/

Connect with Natasha through her website at: www.inspireanddrive.com,
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inspireanddrive/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inspireanddrive/
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/natasha-mitchell-inspired
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFhZ2On-Db_5icdOiYxgRGA
Podcast: Your Business without Borders https://www.inspireanddrive.com/podcast/

Transcript

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Jason Mefford: Welcome to another episode of the fire North podcast, I’m your co host Jason method.

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kathygruver: And I am Kathy gruver and I am thrilled to introduce another guest a powerhouse and amazing woman. We are so thrilled to have Natasha Mitchell on the show. Welcome to Tasha.

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Natasha Mitchell: Hi, Jason. Hi, Kathy. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here today.

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kathygruver: Oh, of course. So why don’t you tell our listeners or viewers a little bit about who you are, what you do what you contribute to the world, all that good stuff.

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Natasha Mitchell: Yeah, for sure. So my name is Natasha, and I’m actually a business coaching consultant and I specialize in helping creative entrepreneurs actually and scale their business with ease. So

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Natasha Mitchell: I really help people to take the complexity out of their business and to create a business that is very much aligned with, you know, sounds a bit cliche, but with their dream life.

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Natasha Mitchell: And so really help them design the business models, the processes the systems where they spend their time so that they’re enjoying what they do and they can make money doing what they do, as well.

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Jason Mefford: So when you use the word creatives, you know, just maybe go into a little bit more of that. Just to make sure I think I kind of know what you’re talking about there, but just want to make sure

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Jason Mefford: Who, what kind of creatives, you actually serve them to

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Natasha Mitchell: Yeah, perfect. Thanks, Jason. And so I worked with a lot of my clients. So, in the event industry. And as it turns out, I mean they’re not only event industry people but I work with a lot of, for example,

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Natasha Mitchell: event planners designers and photographers videographers graphic designers so that people that

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Natasha Mitchell: When I say creative and and you know like some of my clients I Art Gallery owners and online Art Gallery owners and all they produce.

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Natasha Mitchell: You know as specific like a spiritual intention cards. So then people. It’s always interesting. I think it’s great to understand the distinction for me, creative, these people have

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Natasha Mitchell: Our artistic but a very hands on with their craft. So they’re not just offering an information product like you know a lot of coaches do they really creating something in the world. And it’s a physical output of what they create

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Jason Mefford: Well, those people, you know, they’re really, really good at whatever their art is. But they have no idea. Usually, how to run a business. So that’s, that’s where it’s like, I love business coaches that are helping creatives because you know I love art.

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Natasha Mitchell: In general,

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Jason Mefford: You know, and so it’s it’s nice for people to actually be able to make a living from it, you know, because there’s the old joke kind of a thing. You know the artist actually doesn’t make any money until after they’re dead.

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Jason Mefford: Right, very few like Pablo Picasso did but you know most of the people. It’s like their paintings are worth multi million dollars now and they were, you know, poor and starving as an artist, so

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Natasha Mitchell: Yeah, and and it’s interesting what I find with a lot of my clients who who are creative, you know, I think it’s not even necessarily that they don’t know how to to run a business. I think it’s how they run a business is just very different than what we would traditionally think about

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Natasha Mitchell: Business. So as an artist and a creative, the more I would say more abstract thinker. So I could say, oh, you know, give me a summer vide thing and they would know what that looks like. Right.

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Natasha Mitchell: They already have that picture in their mind. Um, so they can kind of take that very tangible

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Natasha Mitchell: Very specific knowledge and then turn it into sort of this visual piece. So maybe if I if I kind of compared it to this, like, I’m very good with a written word, but

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Natasha Mitchell: I’m not necessarily good with a visual so they’re very good with visuals and maybe not so much the tangible and

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Natasha Mitchell: And how that translates. I think what why they sometimes struggle with running a business is because

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Natasha Mitchell: They don’t necessarily think in a very linear pattern right and traditionally how businesses are set up.

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Natasha Mitchell: Are in these very linear patterns. And so you have to do step 1234 whereas they are very good at saying I can do step 1732 and I know because they’re just an abstract way of thinking. I know how all of those pieces are going to look when it number 10 finished right

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kathygruver: Well, and that’s actually what I was gonna say is I think it’s it’s maybe not so much that they don’t know

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kathygruver: How to do it but business isn’t set up for that type of person, it’s set up for the accountants, the bankers, the real estate agents, where there’s this very clear formula and for artists, there isn’t a clear formula and and

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kathygruver: For artists. I’m including event planners and designers and photographers and, you know, if you want to step out of that box of I do something different.

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kathygruver: You have to come about it from a different way. And I’m glad to hear that that you’re doing that. So how did you get to hear how, what is your background, what brought you to this moment.

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Natasha Mitchell: Yeah, so I come from a very linear corporate background starting my career as we

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Jason Mefford: Speak to that.

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Jason Mefford: As an accountant even huh

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Jason Mefford: Oh, I’m a CPA in two states, but I get to see

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Natasha Mitchell: My first job was with Price Waterhouse as an accountant in

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Jason Mefford: There we go. My Degree.

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Natasha Mitchell: Is in commerce and accounting. So I definitely came that

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Natasha Mitchell: Linear very linear path and you know I continue down that path in those kind of roles very analytical roles and a lot of technology roles. I was working with IBM and some of the big consulting firms on

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Natasha Mitchell: Large scale technology transformation. So you know multimillion dollar projects.

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Natasha Mitchell: My specialty was changed management and the training. So really taking that complex technical and then making it easy for people to I’m putting

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Natasha Mitchell: To play. So that’s my background, which is very dense on the line and my alter ego and Kathy. I think you can probably relate to this with your am high flying trapeze my alter ego was dancing modeling playing the piano. I

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Natasha Mitchell: Love fashion. So, all these sort of creative things I’m wearing my personal life, I might say, and it was always very and I would say more of a linear I’m more of a linear thinker, but I’ve got this sort of other very creative side and I always found

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Natasha Mitchell: As a lot of entrepreneurs, I think do is really challenging in the corporate world because I I couldn’t be creative. I couldn’t use that

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Natasha Mitchell: Creative Side you know and and that’s

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Natasha Mitchell: Really why I said, Okay, enough of that. I, I need

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Natasha Mitchell: Get in touch with more of that creative side to enjoy what I’m doing.

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kathygruver: Yeah, it’s so interesting. I’m hearing you say this in a couple different things popped in I was a theater major. I was into drama and psychology and philosophy and all these things. My dad said, why don’t you go be an accountant.

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kathygruver: Which was so counter productive to any urging but I ever and I hate math. I don’t members are just terrifying to me. So that just seemed weird and then I realize it’s like, but when I was pursuing my acting career. I went at it in a very linear fashion. I was very

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kathygruver: thoughtful about what I did and I had the systems in place and I had these these these methods in place. So it’s interesting. I guess in some way. I took the creative career but I went about it in a very linear businesslike fashion.

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kathygruver: So I just, I was just realizing it’s like, I guess I did kind of meld those two worlds.

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kathygruver: So, but for someone that doesn’t someone that doesn’t know how to meld those two worlds. How do you start to guide them into a successful practice if they’re sort of out of the box. Mm hmm.

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Natasha Mitchell: Um, well one of the tools that I’ve created is called the simple business method. So, um, you know, that is particularly with this challenge in mind.

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Natasha Mitchell: What I found with creative people. If I try and give people like a five step.

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Natasha Mitchell: Process and say you have to do this step. First, this step. First, this step burst. They kind of shut down right

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Natasha Mitchell: Even open to listening.

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Natasha Mitchell: I’m times and I understand that. And so how I help them is, is if you can imagine my model is more of a circle.

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Natasha Mitchell: And we, if we can kind of bring in all of the pieces that they need some let’s say there’s four different things that they need, maybe they need a business strategy, maybe they need some leadership skills, maybe they

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Natasha Mitchell: The team, maybe they need to develop some systems and processes. So I’ll sort of take all of the things in that bucket and put them in the circle.

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Natasha Mitchell: And we can grab whatever one they are sort of bit. This is now where I think the more creative people have more of an emotional or an intuitive connection.

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Natasha Mitchell: They will naturally say I’m struggling with my leadership skills. I’m not great. When let’s go over here and let’s work on some of that.

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Natasha Mitchell: Out of that will often see the driver for that is

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Natasha Mitchell: A process or a system or process is not in place, you know, they’re not able to delegate well because they don’t have a process. I usually already know you they don’t have a process in place. But if I bang them and said let’s write a process. First

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Natasha Mitchell: They’re just shutting down. Um, so I’ve found for more creative people this more sort of circular ala carte model where we can bring all of the pieces and we can move more flexibly.

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Natasha Mitchell: To wherever they’re sort of feeling called to do. Um, it’s almost like unstructured structure that that’s all you know only how I can best describe it, it offers a lot more flexibility.

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Natasha Mitchell: And they naturally start to see those patterns versus me giving them a very prescriptive way of seeing that pattern.

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Jason Mefford: That’s a great way of actually thinking about it.

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Jason Mefford: Because then it allows them to continue to be creative, or feel like they’re kind of guiding what it is that they’re that they’re developing

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Jason Mefford: But yeah, like you said, I mean if you don’t have strategy leadership team and systems, it’s going to be pretty hard for you to run a business right so

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Jason Mefford: So effectively, which one of these, you want to start working on first. It doesn’t matter. You got to have all four at the end of the day, which one you want to start working on first and like you said, it usually leads to one of those other discussions anyway.

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Natasha Mitchell: Yeah. And so a couple of things I often say in my, in my discussions with people is

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Natasha Mitchell: Like creative people don’t like to feel like they’re stuck in a box right like typical systems and instruction makes them feel like they’re stuck in a box. So if I can help them feel like they’re not stuck in a box. They’re already going to have a more

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Natasha Mitchell: A more open mind to am

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Natasha Mitchell: Hearing that information and they’re not going to be scared they’re not going to feel like, oh, this is a business E and horrible, they kind of going to feel like this is fun and creative and I’m kind of creating my own stories so

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Natasha Mitchell: I think that’s very important for creative people. And the second thing I would say Jason is as because I’ve worked on a lot of creative people I I have seen this enough times to know it to be true. It actually doesn’t matter which order you put

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Natasha Mitchell: This you know the systems, the leadership, the strategy, the processes. The team it honestly doesn’t really matter.

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Natasha Mitchell: which order they go in ultimately matters that you have all of those pieces. And I mean, it seems, it doesn’t it almost doesn’t seem logical but reality is

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Natasha Mitchell: It doesn’t. I don’t need a strategy to work on processes. I could work on processes without a strategy. You know, I can work on um, you know, a business idea without having a team.

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Natasha Mitchell: You know,

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Natasha Mitchell: Hey, or I could bring a team really early and have no strategy. You know, I present I could bring a team on really early in a business and have the team help guide me on the strategy and the processes and build that

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Natasha Mitchell: So it’s a little counterintuitive, but it actually works. Yeah.

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kathygruver: It makes perfect sense to me because

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kathygruver: Because this was actually in a dream I had last night as well when you were reading term papers in school.

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kathygruver: When you had to write, whether it was a creative thing or you’d had to turn a writing assignment. This was my favorite thing ever. Until they said

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kathygruver: Turn in your outline turn in your note cards, then turn in the paper. They demanded that you had a structure for that paper. Whereas, I’m like,

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kathygruver: No, I’m going to write the paper. I’ll let you know. And I hated when you had to turn that stuff and ahead of time because I had no idea where the paper was going to go

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kathygruver: I wanted to let it unfold in front of me but they kept you in this turn in your note cards outline thing first. So I could

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kathygruver: Absolutely. See how maybe using this kind of thing in a classroom or in work, because we all learn differently. Also, and I feel like classrooms, of course, who knows what they look like, right now.

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kathygruver: Are so structure based that it leaves a creative people going, I don’t know what I’m doing. So either they’re acting out or they’re rebelling against and then does that translate into later how we run our business.

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Natasha Mitchell: Oh, I think so. And I mean, I think, fundamentally, if we go back. Historically, the reason schools have been created in that very institutionalized way was to

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Natasha Mitchell: Provide a workforce for a very institutionalized corporate kind of world, right. So our whole system is based on that, and I agree. I think a lot of

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Natasha Mitchell: Creative people’s talents haven’t been fostered or their learning style hasn’t been addressed. It’s hard in a classroom when you’ve got 30 or 40 kids in a class to give them each a different way to learn it, but I think

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Natasha Mitchell: Our underlying structures on the world have been created for a very institutionalized structure, it’ll be very interesting to see what the future holds for us because

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Natasha Mitchell: Though

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Natasha Mitchell: World is opening up in a much more prolific way to entrepreneurial thinking and creativity and I’m not sure our old structure of education. I think we see that in many discussions is actually supporting more of that entrepreneurial thinking and lifestyle and all those pieces.

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Jason Mefford: And I think even to as you as you’re talking about it, you know, even, even if if a business owner isn’t so creative.

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Jason Mefford: I think some of the prescriptive steps that people kind of say, well, you have to do this before you can do this before you can do this.

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Jason Mefford: That it actually, you know, ends up hurting. Some of the other people as well, right, because you know again well

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Jason Mefford: If you’re marketing, you probably need to have a website. Right, so how many, how many business owners been six months, coming up with the perfect website and it’s like

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Jason Mefford: You can actually sell products without having a website and people are like, what, what do you mean I could you know I have to have a website don’t know. You don’t have to have a website, actually, to start

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Jason Mefford: generating revenue. So I think even in the business world, like you were talking about with educational world.

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Jason Mefford: It’s probably time to start thinking, behold it. We don’t have to do it that same way. There’s these pieces you need to have in place.

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Jason Mefford: which order you go in probably doesn’t matter, right, like you said your clients. It doesn’t matter whether which one of these, they start with first ultimately you just need to have them all in place at some point.

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Natasha Mitchell: Yeah, I think that’s like a really great analogy, Jason. I mean, you, you see it all the time. And like a lot of my clients, apart from, you know, what I would say my traditional creatives. A lot of people do use

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Natasha Mitchell: Provide online services or online courses and I can’t even tell you how many times, and even someone who’s very new in business, you know, the first thing they say is, like, I need to have a website. I’m like, what, what do you need a website for you.

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Natasha Mitchell: Right, so there there is this very linear way of doing

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Natasha Mitchell: That is, I think, hurting entrepreneurs, I think.

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Natasha Mitchell: Entrepreneurs generally need to be a lot more dynamic and flexible and do the imperfect action. You know, we hear all that imperfect action but

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Natasha Mitchell: I’m a big part of my methodology, apart from sort of this linear it, you know, it’s called the simple business method. So my whole method with people is

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Natasha Mitchell: If they want to do something. So, okay, this would be like the Rolls Royce of it.

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Natasha Mitchell: What’s the simplest thing you can do if we were doing an online lunch. While we had simplest thing. How could we do this without a website without a sales funnel without or whatever, it’s like, Okay, we’ll just do a Facebook Live or an Instagram Live

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Natasha Mitchell: Put out one slide. Do a call to action and direct them to a PayPal link, you know, anyone can do that and you can get it up in like a week versus six months of getting a sales funnel setup.

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kathygruver: Right, well, and it’s a great way to stall your business because you look at those steps and you go

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kathygruver: I don’t want to do and then you would have not doing anything, thinking that you have to do all of these steps freezes. You and I know people who have spent six months learning to code their own website.

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kathygruver: And you know to go. We had a we had an organizational sort of psychology person on who said, are you in the weeds.

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kathygruver: Or are you doing those things that you’re supposed to do. And if you’re spending all of this, you know, you’re spending a year at the

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kathygruver: Community College learning to do your own website. Oh my god. Get on wicks and just do it you know

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kathygruver: Rather than getting into the, what is your business. And I remember

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kathygruver: You know, try to put systems in place when I started my massage practice. And I remember driving around with so much laundry in my car.

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kathygruver: Because I didn’t have a laundry service. And there was one day and then Jason I told the story where someone called me for a massage and I couldn’t because I didn’t have any sheets.

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kathygruver: And so I found myself at home because I, they’re all dirty. I didn’t quit on that. So I found myself at home doing your 300 loads of laundry. And then I thought, What is my business.

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kathygruver: I’m a massage therapist. I’m not Alondra and there was that afternoon. I went to the local place. And I said, What do you charge for bulk laundry and I set up that system so that I had that stuff in place. Didn’t know I needed it till I needed it kind of thing.

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kathygruver: So for someone who is stuck in that loop of they feel like they have to do all this other stuff. First, how do you communicate that to them of sort of be free and do it do it your way.

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Natasha Mitchell: Yeah, um, you know, the number one exercise I do with people is I do a quick dream life worksheet so really help them to see

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Natasha Mitchell: What are they, what is their ultimate goal. What are they really love doing.

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Natasha Mitchell: What do they not love doing. I mean, like, I came. It’s like, super simple. I don’t go into big value, you know, it’s just not my specialty. I’m not a big values on mindset, but there’s some basic questions you can ask people, so that’s the first thing. And as soon as they see that

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Natasha Mitchell: Even like at a really basic level, they can make that connection that

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Natasha Mitchell: Already the parts in their business that they don’t enjoy doing or they’re not good at and they should be outsourcing right so they can already see that that picture and

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Natasha Mitchell: You know, I also use a tool called the Business Model Canvas, which is by Alexander Osterwalder and his opinion, it’s a very visual way of looking at a business model. So that tool I find really valuable. Again, especially for creators because

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Natasha Mitchell: They can start seeing their business in a more in a more visual way. And again, it’s much easier to see where the breakpoint points are are in that as well. Yeah, yeah.

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Jason Mefford: Well, it’s interesting because anytime that you can put stuff down visually.

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Jason Mefford: It’s better. So you’ve got an accounting background to write. It’s like I used to. You could in accounting, you could write narratives which are memos that kind of describe a process.

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Jason Mefford: Now I would make my people do flow charts that use pictures and symbols and arrows because you could bullshit your way through writing a narrative.

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Jason Mefford: You can’t bullshit your way through doing a flow chart, you actually have to understand the process and so

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Jason Mefford: It’s almost like that’s that’s kind of what I equated it to when you’re talking about this Business Model Canvas is, look, you’re kind of throwing it up there, and especially for creatives. I’m sure this is great because it’s like you’re painting a picture. Ooh, I love that. Right.

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Jason Mefford: And then you’re kind of moving stuff around on it. And it’s like, Oh, now I can see right

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Jason Mefford: And when you kind of get that visual representation of it, or when you go through an exercise like your dream life worksheet.

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Jason Mefford: It becomes clear to them at that point. Right. And then as a coach, you’re just kind of guiding them for the the AHA was that they’ve already had through the process. Right.

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Natasha Mitchell: Yeah and you know i mean exactly that. And you know I think because of my background in corporate and what I’ve talked about, you know, like I came learning and development and change management.

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Natasha Mitchell: I have had so much exposure to thousands of different people and found you know related learning styles. So whenever in the past I’ve had to create content. I’ve had to think about people’s

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Natasha Mitchell: different learning styles and how are they going to absorb and apply this information. So there’s definitely a level of my background of 20 years of doing that makes it easy.

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Natasha Mitchell: For me kind of intuitively to spot what a person’s natural style is and and I adjust a lot of what I do to those natural, natural styles and so for example, if someone is

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Natasha Mitchell: You know, very adverse to deadlines. I’ll look at a way or technique that we can make that deadline feel less oppressive and that they’ve got more flexibility in

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Natasha Mitchell: You know, if someone. Again, we already sort of at the start of this said, you know, they create a people are more visual learners. As a general rule, so exactly that I do lots of things on big flip charts and sticky notes and colored pens.

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Natasha Mitchell: And it seems really little, and Kathy. I think you have a background in psychology and NLP and some of those things. You know those triggers Jason just said it I paint a picture. So even though

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Natasha Mitchell: I’m going to that you use with people can

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Natasha Mitchell: And I’m thinking about whether this is gonna be

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Really

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kathygruver: Yeah, so, so we have two more of ourselves to our audience.

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kathygruver: should adapt your communication style. This is good stuff, Jason.

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kathygruver: We talked about this.

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kathygruver: We talked about this so often of morphing our message to those people and adjusting our communication style to that which they’re receiving and

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kathygruver: It is about that customization and I love that we’re having this conversation because so often we’re expected to be put

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kathygruver: In this box in this this click funnel and this way of doing it. And so to sort of give everyone permission to buck that system and say, I’m going to do it my way. I think that that’s fabulous. And of course, once again, we’ve we’re on our, on our, on our last couple minutes of time.

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kathygruver: Jason, any final thoughts for you and then Natasha will throw it back to you if you have anything to

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Jason Mefford: Say at the end. I love this idea of the simple

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Jason Mefford: Business method, you know, because, again, I think, I think this the simpler that you can make it the better. And I love that idea to have it doesn’t have to be a prescriptive formula you must do a before you do be before us to do see right

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Jason Mefford: And and i think you know it works well obviously for creatives. But I think to as we’ve all even just kind of talked about ourselves personally right again. I was trained in that very corporate logical process.

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Jason Mefford: Phase, right, but that is not who I am as a person. I am a much more creative person who paints and writes poetry and plays music and does other things as well. And so I think I think these concepts can help everybody

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Jason Mefford: You know, in being able to kind of move forward and not get stuck. You know that’s that’s a word that you hear a lot of entrepreneurs say I’m stuck. I’m stuck. I’m stuck.

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Jason Mefford: Or they’re stuck because they’re trying to go through a process that they don’t want to do. They’re spending six months on the website. And it’s like,

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Jason Mefford: You know, like you said, Just, just put up a PayPal link just put up a you know one landing page that has a payment link on it. You know, I’ve heard lots of people they have, you know, five five figure launches.

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Jason Mefford: With no website, all they have is an offer on one page or a PayPal link and you know it works. So, you know, quit trying to make things complex just be simple, figure out what’s most important that you can do next, and what you want to work on.

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Jason Mefford: I love that simple business method right that you’re that you’re using with your clients. Yeah.

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Natasha Mitchell: And if and if it helps people have more fun. Like, why are we doing business it you know fun and freedom of the biggest words I ever hear. So if we’re just trying to do exactly the same. That was in corporate and we’re trying to make

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Natasha Mitchell: That heavy inflexible, you know, big machine in our own business. I just say, we’ll just stay in corporate and, you know, have a guaranteed paycheck. But if you really want that fun and freedom then be

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Natasha Mitchell: Be creative.

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Jason Mefford: Business

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Natasha Mitchell: And create a business that works for you, not the other way around. Yeah.

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kathygruver: That’s good advice for all of us a great to talk to you because this has been so much fun. Where can people reach you.

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Natasha Mitchell: So, um, people can reach me at my website, which is inspire and dr.com and or on Instagram inspire and drive. I’m on Instagram. A lot of share a lot of my

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Natasha Mitchell: Tricks and keep connected with people there and if you join me on my website, there’s a free downloadable of the simple business method right

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Natasha Mitchell: So you can get your hands on that you can

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Natasha Mitchell: Have a look at that and people can start to make their own our cart.

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Natasha Mitchell: Costs costume.

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Natasha Mitchell: Just selecting the pieces that worked for them so great.

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kathygruver: Yeah yeah yeah inspiring dreary com we will send people there that will be in the show notes. And then it’s also it’s running right below you right now.

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kathygruver: magic of editing.

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kathygruver: tells you this has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for being here. I am Kathy gruver I can be reached at Kathy Gruber calm.

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Jason Mefford: And I’m Jason effort. I can be reached at Jason method calm, so go out, have a great week. Make your business simple go download the simple business method and then just start doing something this week, take some action get going.

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Jason Mefford: And have a great week. Everybody will see you on the next fire North podcast. See ya. Yeah.

E94: Vendor Risk Management with Rick Roybal

As organizations outsource more and more of their processes, the #risk associated with managing those vendor relationships goes up. Organizations may think they are removing the risk by #outsourcing, but they are only sharing or transferring a portion of the risk. Just ask the countless organizations that found themselves holding the bag on a multi-million dollar fine or penalty when their vendor wasn’t compliant.

In this #jammingwithjason #internalauditpodcast I speak with Rick Roybal about the importance of having mentors in your career and risk around third-party, vendor risk management.

Listen in at: http://www.jasonmefford.com/jammingwithjason/

Registration for the Fall 2020 Oil & Gas Vendor Roundtable mentioned during the episode is now open. When you are ready, visit https://www.vendoraudit.org/fall2020ogvr to see the speaker lineup (and you will see Jason’s smiling face).

Just a few details for you:

  • If you work for an operator, there is no cost to you.
  • There are a limited number of seats available.
  • Dates: October 28-29.
  • CPEs offered

Register for the Oil & Gas Vendor Roundtable at: https://www.vendoraudit.org/fall2020ogvr

Make sure to check also out The Tour Report podcast with Rick (especially if you are in the oil and gas sector) at: https://www.vendoraudit.org/tourreport

Trancscript

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Jason Mefford: Hey everybody, I am joined today by my friend Rick rival Hey Rob

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Jason Mefford: How you doing, man.

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Rick Roybal: I’m man. How are you doing,

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Rick Roybal: I get reminded me

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Jason Mefford: Well, it’s my pleasure. I know that you know I was on your podcast a little bit ago and the tower report but spelled T O you are

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Jason Mefford: Right. For those in oil and gas. They know how to spell tower. The other way.

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Jason Mefford: And yeah, excited to have you here. So maybe, you know, again, just so you kind of, you know, familiarize yourself with the with the listeners to just maybe give a little, little background, who you are, kind of, what should do and then let’s just jump in and start talking about audit stuff.

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Rick Roybal: Yeah, absolutely. Well, again, thank you so much. Jason, for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. And again, it’s interesting how we all kind of kind of connect with each other, you know,

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Rick Roybal: Again, as is great, you know, platform able to do that. Rick royal you know he if you look at his resume and I’ve caught a lot of things. I’m a resume because

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Rick Roybal: I turned 49 Monday.

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Jason Mefford: Oh, you do it so your birthday, your birthdays. Right. Okay. Mine was Wednesday.

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Jason Mefford: That’s right. So there we go, there we go, there we go.

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Rick Roybal: So getting old here. So I’ve cut some things out. But really, my, my background is sort of

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Rick Roybal: Starts here, I started off in teaching and taught over in Eastern Europe and Central Europe and places like Slovakia and Bulgaria transition to

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Rick Roybal: United States where I was continuing to teach, but at the same time I was getting more involved in the world of it and software development of all things, and

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Rick Roybal: I found it a logical segue of my career in order to a make more money and be do something a little bit more interesting than just day to day classroom work.

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Rick Roybal: I went into technical writing technical training, it made a lot of sense. At the time, what was happening while I was doing the technical writing is I was working for companies that were had you know era P jeal, you know, General general type of

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Rick Roybal: software application. And while I had shunned accounting in my whole

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Rick Roybal: Career up to that point, I found myself really enjoying it. And I also started to understand, you know what, what it meant by internal controls and specifically with it. Like if there was

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Rick Roybal: We had a particular piece where we were setting up users and you know provisioning, you know this person to do this role in this role with us. Those are controls.

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Rick Roybal: Right there. And so I was learning what this meant and where we’re kind of where people fit and an organization was really good. The problem was, I still was not doing what I’m doing today.

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Rick Roybal: That happened when a I got a phone call from my uncle. He’s a CPA down in Baton Rouge always has been a great mentor in my life, called me up on. We were living in Colorado, and he said,

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Rick Roybal: I just finished this article in the ICP a magazine about this dearth of it auditors.

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Rick Roybal: And I think that this might be a good step in your career, you can when you know your passions and but the only problem is that you need to be able to go back to school, so I found a great university up there in Colorado Springs.

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Rick Roybal: Got my MBA PTC picked me up real quickly and then that audit career just started to happen and things made sense. I didn’t stay with audit, excuse me, the it audit sees me

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Rick Roybal: Went to more operational type of internal audit environment. But that’s where I’ve kind of landed and it’s really kind of been interesting because audit is for me is working with people teaching people sometimes learning from them.

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Rick Roybal: It’s about writing reports. It’s about making recommendations and I didn’t realize at the time, but probably somewhere in early 2000 maybe 2006 or so the teaching career and the technical writing career really laid the groundwork for what I do today.

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Jason Mefford: I think it’s, it’s, it’s always fascinating how people kind of come to this this profession, right, because the same thing. I know when I was a little boy.

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Jason Mefford: I was not going around going, hey, I don’t want to become an internal auditor Sunday or. I was like, No, I want to be a fireman or a policeman or I was going to be a general in the in the military.

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Jason Mefford: Tells a little bit about myself. But, but, you know, it’s interesting because like you said so many of us come to this in some different roundabout ways

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Jason Mefford: You know, it’s the same thing, like you said, you know, if you look at your resume.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, there’s a lot of things I don’t tell people that I’ve done, like, you know, real estate. I was a realtor I

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Jason Mefford: You know, I, I spent a lot of years in construction because my father owned a construction and real estate company right

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Jason Mefford: And, you know, different things like that but that that at some point, we end up kind of making our way to this to this profession.

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Jason Mefford: And and just like you said, I mean I’ve loved it because I’ve met some really interesting people and work with some really interesting companies.

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Jason Mefford: And got to learn a lot more about business, how people make money what they do. You know, I remember a lot of times in public accounting. I just kind of shake my head. And I’m like, I cannot believe actually

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Jason Mefford: You know companies make money doing this. I didn’t even know this existed, you know, yeah, kind of thing, which is which is always fun.

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Jason Mefford: So,

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Rick Roybal: Yeah, no doubt about it. Well, I’m glad I’m glad I’m here. I’ve had some really great mentors along the way. You know, you know, I talked

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Rick Roybal: About that a little bit last time. But, you know, one in particular is my boss at a company in Fort Worth, and I work for in

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Rick Roybal: My camera is his name and he’s just foundational in my life where he just, you know, helped shape and mold me, give me, you know, the space to be able to make mistakes and learn put me in front of people to be able to

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Rick Roybal: Work on speaking skills and and skills, where you need to be convinced someone I mean that’s that’s a big part of our job is convincing the other

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Rick Roybal: Part of the table, you know, so to speak, but my 10 number was really great mentor in that sense, I had some great people along the way that have just helped me to be where I’m at today.

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Jason Mefford: Well, you know, it’s funny because you you bring that up. A lot of people don’t really bring that up. So maybe let’s just talk about that for just a couple minutes because

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Jason Mefford: It is so important to have mentors or people that you can look up to that kind of help guide you in your career. Right. And there’s different people at different points in time.

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Jason Mefford: Because one that I remember is you know Jim Crawford was his name. He was the the controller at the company that I was working for

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Jason Mefford: When I was going through college when I was getting my accounting degree. So, I had an accounting intern in corporate accounting at this at this company.

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Jason Mefford: And, you know, was on the track to go into public accounting and but of course you know I got married early. We had a baby on the way.

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Jason Mefford: My wife is kind of pressuring me, you know, finding finance wise you know and and an entry level accounting position came open and I was qualified for it and

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Jason Mefford: So I put in on I put in for it.

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Jason Mefford: And I remember Jim calling me into his office, you know. So here it is. This is a guy who was like the treasure of this multi billion dollar company and now he was the controller because he was moving around and finance. So, you know, he calls me in his office and says, you know, Jason.

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Jason Mefford: You’re doing a really great job here but you know I need to counsel you that this is probably not the right career move for you. And I’m like, Why you know Joe I’m qualified for it, he said. He said, You have so much more to offer than just being an accountant.

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Jason Mefford: You know, you need to stay on your on your path.

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Jason Mefford: That you’re on go into public accounting and and kind of, you know, take that career route instead

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Jason Mefford: You know, and at the time it was like, you know, damn it was like twice the money, right. So, you know, part of me wanted to kind of take that short term thing. But, you know, many, many times. Now in the last, you know, 25 plus years, you know, since Jim told me that

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Jason Mefford: I’m so grateful to him right because eventually yes I got into public accounting, who was one of my first clients. Oh, the client that I actually worked for. Right. What was my first Chief audit executive job it was for that client.

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Jason Mefford: Right. And so in a in a short space of, you know, six years or six, seven years, all of a sudden I catapulted my career and was back working for the same company.

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Jason Mefford: As the chief audit executive I never would have done that, if Jim hadn’t given me given me that that mentoring at that time. So yeah, for everybody listening. If you don’t have mentors, you know, try to find people

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Rick Roybal: Out one

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Jason Mefford: Seek seek people out

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Rick Roybal: And conversely, if you are someone with some, you know, some senior esque type of experience, you know, 10 years in 15 years behind your belt. You could even be, you know, have less than that, you know,

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Rick Roybal: But really, is to be grooming and look, you know, it’s like, look at the people in your staff and no I’m not trying to be, you know, have this natural selection thing of like, I’m going to get rid of this person here.

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Rick Roybal: Yeah, this money’s going to make it this McGee’s not

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Rick Roybal: But it but really the thing is is that is looking at people an incentive saying, Look, I’ve got this group of people that I can really group and and in different ways, you know this person really needs help. And this skill set and do it in a way of that.

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Rick Roybal: That encourages them.

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Rick Roybal: Do it in a way that helps build them up gives them some good constructive feedback. I think that’s as just as a that’s one thing that we’re not really good at. Sometimes we sometimes

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Rick Roybal: Hold back on that can really true constructive feedback. So we want to hurt anybody’s feelings. Well, sometimes you need to speak the truth right and and so that and that’s part of mentoring is like, just like you know Jim said, Do you think this is not the right path for you.

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Rick Roybal: I know, I know.

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Jason Mefford: It will because it brings to mind there’s there’s two words that the sometimes get confused in the words are kind and nice. Yeah. Yeah. And

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Jason Mefford: You know it’s it’s it’s way more important to be kind, than it is to be nice and sometimes we think they’re the same, but they’re not. Because like you said, sometimes it’s kinder

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Rick Roybal: Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: To give people that constructive feedback to be hard on them because in their long term. It’s the kinder thing to do.

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Jason Mefford: For them as a person. Right.

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Jason Mefford: And so yeah, I mean I there’s been several times he’s he’s long been retired, you know, moved on to another company retired from that. But yeah, there’s a lot of times that I think back and I’m just so grateful for him.

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Jason Mefford: You know, telling me that it wasn’t what I wanted to hear at the time.

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Jason Mefford: But it was exactly what I needed to hear. Yeah, right. So, so that’s that’s a good point to for anybody you know as you as you move forward in your career, try to help people you know as well and be kind to them and help them along the way.

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Jason Mefford: As well.

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Jason Mefford: Because you know people helped us get to where we’re at. So let’s help people, you know, along the way, that’s kind of why you and I do what we do now. Now, even to right

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Rick Roybal: Right, exactly.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, cuz I wanted, I wanted to jump in and talk a little bit about

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Jason Mefford: You know the you’ve got the podcasts, a tower report, I know you’re also running

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Jason Mefford: Around table. So let’s let’s kind of get him talk a little bit about that because that’s another it’s an opportunity for people

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Jason Mefford: You know, to be able to mix with peers to be able to get some of that mentoring maybe from people

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Jason Mefford: That are that are already doing stuff that maybe you’re not doing yet so maybe talk a little bit about that kind of explain what that is for people because I think it’s great what you’re doing now.

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Rick Roybal: Thank you. Yeah, I’m really proud of the organization. I’m or it’s and where it’s come today and come from, but

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Rick Roybal: We basically in about 2013 or so, I was working for a consulting firm and we tried to do something where we were trying to get gather you know chief audit executive together that were in oil and gas.

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Rick Roybal: But it really didn’t work very well. Not because we didn’t gather the right people. It’s just that we were. It was too salesy

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Rick Roybal: And it just, it was a turn off big time. But I knew the idea was still a viable one just had to kind of recreate it in a sense, but I love to sort of that back compartment of your mind for a while and

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Rick Roybal: I, a year and a half goes by, happened to be on a phone call with the with the pier and she now we’re talking about our audits. We weren’t, you know,

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Rick Roybal: It wasn’t bad mouthing vendors are like that. It was just the fact that we were like sharing. Hey, what are you doing

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Rick Roybal: On this type of audit. What are you doing this I bought it. What kind of, you know, technique us and tests, etc. And we were both specifically working in oil and gas as an operator, the upstream art and specifically auditing our suppliers, though.

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Rick Roybal: This conversation lasted a couple hours on phone I got fun like we need to get together, you know, collectively and be able to share ideas and best practices, etc.

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Rick Roybal: Um, she wouldn’t reach out to a few people. I started reaching out to people again thanks to LinkedIn and all of a sudden we had 10 people that were going to meet in a hotel conference room and Dallas, Texas.

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Rick Roybal: I had asked her, I said.

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Rick Roybal: Hey, you know, come up with a presentation, I’ll come up with a presentation, etc. And we’ll, we’ll meet for the whole day. So that’s how it went. And I thought it would. All right.

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Rick Roybal: It was a the best presentations in the whole world, you know, mine was, you know, just something I had put together a couple weeks before but what what what was doing, is it was creating a

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Rick Roybal: Group of people that didn’t normally kind of meet up in such a way that we were having a good solid conversation without the

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Rick Roybal: The, the booths of sales. The people talking to you and the clattering of the ice glasses in the big hotel conference room.

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Rick Roybal: So an idea of birth that day where we wanted to have a model of how can we get together. It’s a peer based presentation. It’s not are not seeking out the

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Rick Roybal: The President of some fraud organization or whatever else is

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Rick Roybal: True, we are in the weeds. We are the people that are doing the work. We have the ideas and we want to share that with our peers and vice versa. We want to hear what you’re doing, peer or colleague there that says so.

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Rick Roybal: We started meeting every six months and I would get these emails together and send them often. And then, you know, and we’d meet and

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Rick Roybal: It’s what what what happened was it started growing organically where somebody else would say, Hey, we got this group so that 10 people was then 30 people a year later, and then it went, you know, on and on and on. And today.

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Rick Roybal: last count, or over 400 people were over with over the whole world. Now we have people in the UK. We have people in Africa.

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Rick Roybal: And a couple people in in Asia where it’s just, again, it’s just word of mouth that’s happening. It’s a great environment because

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Rick Roybal: The platform is this, we are trying to get oil and gas vendor risk management, and that includes audit that includes contract management procurement anybody to talk about the risks that are involved with

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Rick Roybal: vendor management and and we also are want to invite the vendors themselves because they have a piece of this puzzle and that is

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Rick Roybal: When they are implementing best practices and more auditing those as an operator or third party or operator, we’re finding that

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Rick Roybal: These audits go a lot better. You know that we’re not finding these issues that can, you know, continue to occur over and over again.

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Rick Roybal: So the vendor or the supplier hearing these these best practices being shared by the people that are auditing. We all kind of start off and start to build an industry standard that we can all kind of work on

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Rick Roybal: So now, now we’re we meet still continue to meet every six months. It is still really kind of based on the members are presenting for the most part.

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Rick Roybal: And it’s, I would liken it to a very much of a university setting where you have the instructor, the professor speaking, but the students. In this case, the members.

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Rick Roybal: Can ask questions. It’s really there’s none of this again that clunky, or you know water cups, you know, the waiter coming by with a big trade.

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Rick Roybal: You know,

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Rick Roybal: Happy thing, you know, you know,

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Jason Mefford: I don’t know. Yeah.

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Rick Roybal: And he was like, let’s get rid of that stuff. Let’s really peer to peer communication. So,

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Rick Roybal: It’s, it’s fantastic. I love the members, we’re doing a lot of neat things we’re building content. Now we have a content development team that’s that’s

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Rick Roybal: That’s a part of it. We’re building an advisory board where members are the guys and the gals that are saying this is what the themes that we want to talk about here are the people that we want to invite so it’s really member driven organization that I’m just so proud of its, it’s great.

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Jason Mefford: Well, you have to thank you you know you say you’re doing them every six months, I think your next one is actually coming up here pretty quick, too. Right.

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Rick Roybal: Yeah, it’s an October. October 28 and 29th and obviously cove. It is then it’s thing on you know meetings like this and we prefer to meet obviously in person, but it will be a virtual round table.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, well, which is good. And again, you know, like you said, the, the whole Clanking of the water glasses and you know people getting up and everything else you know it’s it’s it’s distracting enough

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Jason Mefford: As a participant right when that’s when that’s going on, you know, in the person’s, you know, but you like coffee, you know, and

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Jason Mefford: All this kind of stuff. Imagine being the speaker up on the stage where people are eating too. Right. It’s like, yeah, it’s not a fun situation, it’s not

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Jason Mefford: You know you’re hearing the client gang and the everything else. And it’s harder to hold attention so

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Jason Mefford: You know, it’s great for opportunities like that, you know, and so again I mean there’s oil and gas all over the world. And so, you know, yeah, if you’re not aware of it, you know, try to join on October 28 and 29th.

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Jason Mefford: You know, where, where, where would people actually go to be able to find out information and kind of get registered for it.

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Rick Roybal: Good question, they can go to vendor roundtable calm. Okay. The

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Rick Roybal: Table calm and there’s we you know we have a an oil and gas Roundtable. We also have a construction roundtable as well so

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Rick Roybal: We’re building this out industry by industry and know that there’s this huge need to talk about and share best practices with vendor risk management amongst different and and and that the participants are different in each one.

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Rick Roybal: I mean, when you start getting into it if they’ll say healthcare goes next or a bank that you’re really talking more about those people that are it’s more it related as opposed to somebody contractors out in the on the oil field so

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Rick Roybal: It. So it’s an interesting place to be at as far as

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Rick Roybal: Being able to share and discuss and ask those questions because goodness knows without things like podcasts and roundtables and such.

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Rick Roybal: Remember those days when we didn’t have the answers. You know, we talked about this last time. It’s like those days that we didn’t have any answers. What do we do, how do we get to it. You know, so

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Jason Mefford: Now you can type into Google search or you can, you know, listen to podcast to other stuff.

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Jason Mefford: Well, I think, I think, to you know that one of the things that you

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Jason Mefford: Kind of mentioned before that I know people are struggling with is is they say, oh, now I’m in a virtual environment. I’m stuck at home. I’m working from home. How am I going to develop relationships. Right. Well, you and I did it.

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Jason Mefford: This way right we’ve never met in person.

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Jason Mefford: Right, we happen to know a common person.

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Jason Mefford: And that person said, hey, Rick and Jason, you guys should know each other. Yeah. So kind of connected us we chatted back and forth on LinkedIn, a little bit set up a virtual video call we talked

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Jason Mefford: liked each other. I came on your podcast. You’re coming on mine.

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Jason Mefford: You know, and it’s like, that’s you can still develop these relationships people, even though it’s virtual and it’s the same kind of stuff.

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Rick Roybal: definitely encourage people to do that because I mean it’s just we’re so stuck in the house. Nowadays, I mean, we have our friends and all that kind of stuff. But there are people to develop relationships with. I mean, we live in a very

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Rick Roybal: Polarized country for everything right now and it’s hard to have good conversations because at the end of the

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Rick Roybal: We clean the glasses of wine and each share each other’s bread. But eventually we get to that point where it’s like either you’re on my side, or I’m on your side of this type of thing. I was listening to something like NPR this morning, the same thing. And it’s like,

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Rick Roybal: It’s so polarized and it’s like

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Rick Roybal: But we need to develop more and more friendships, you know, because

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Jason Mefford: Well, we do. And it’s the, it’s that divisiveness that you’re talking about, because people are looking for things that are different about the other person right

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Jason Mefford: And so even again, you know, I mean, you just talk to your birthday was this week, you know, on Monday. Mine was on Wednesday. Hey, we’re both Leo’s

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Jason Mefford: Hey, we’re both, you know, I’m

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Jason Mefford: I’m one year younger than you. Okay.

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Jason Mefford: I don’t usually tell people how old I am. But, you know, somebody might be able to do the math now.

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Jason Mefford: But you know. So already we know that we have some things in common. Right. And so, as we’ve as we’re developing and growing our relationship.

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Jason Mefford: We’re not worrying about or trying to talk about things that were different on or that we disagree on we’re trying to find things that we have common interests on

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Jason Mefford: That’s and that’s why it’s great that you know things like this Roundtable. You know, the roundtables that you’re doing, where it’s like hey if you’re in certain industries.

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Jason Mefford: Well, let’s get together as industries. Right. Yeah, just like I do with CA’s but in a different way. Right. It’s like, look, if you want to focus on

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Jason Mefford: Your executive presence and developing your leadership skills and working better with the relationships. I’ve got the CA forum. Right.

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Jason Mefford: They’re two different things. They don’t compete. They have different kind of, you know, reasons and some people are going to want to go to one. Some people are going to want to go to the other. Right, right.

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Jason Mefford: But there’s options now that are out there.

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Jason Mefford: That people can get together with like minded.

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Rick Roybal: People

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Jason Mefford: If they want

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Rick Roybal: If they want to like you. Yeah.

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Right.

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Jason Mefford: You know, which is great. So, well, and I know you know another one of the things is you guys are kind of focusing on some of the vendor risk management stuff. Yes.

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Jason Mefford: And I know that’s been a hot topic right now, people may not use the word vendor risk management, they might use third party risk is another one that you hear a lot about. So maybe, you know, in the time that we have left. Let’s, let’s just kind of talk about that a little bit.

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Jason Mefford: You know, in you know maybe why people are talking about it. Now, why aren’t we talking about this 50 years ago you know why it actually is a big deal. Now why there is risk around vendors or third parties as well.

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Yeah.

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Rick Roybal: I’d say for I’ll kind of jump around a little bit here. And then since let’s start, we can start with oil and gas just cuz I know best, but

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Rick Roybal: I would say that it’s it’s a very important subject for upstream midstream and answering those are drilling or transporting. Those are refining refining because

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Rick Roybal: These different segments of the oil and gas industry rely heavily on third parties to perform their services not that

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Rick Roybal: Oil and gas companies are lazy and we just sit up and not your little ivory tower and tell me what to do. It’s not the case at all. It’s that

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Rick Roybal: Oil and gas like a lot of industries, but specifically with oil, gas goes up has ups and downs and if for let’s say for example, an upstream company.

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Rick Roybal: Pad all of the services that were provided by third parties in house, it would be extremely costly to produce, you know, a gallon of

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Rick Roybal: Gasoline, and because they’re having to pay for all of the benefits and all the salaries and we may not even be using them for that sense. So, for example, right now, a lot of operators are

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Rick Roybal: Up in the exploration part don’t use a lot of not fracking a lot. They’re not drilling a lot right now because the prices so low. It’s not cost effective.

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Rick Roybal: If, if that service were in house we would either have to be laying people off or we would have to be paying paying for them to just sit around

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Rick Roybal: And so in if we were laying them off, we’d have to bring them back on and train them, and this kind of thing. So it’s much more cost effective for companies like an upstream company to hire out the expertise.

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Rick Roybal: That exists with third parties. So now why is it risk management part of it. Why is that important. Well, first of all, they are in an environment that’s very extremely high risk you’re talking about hot in something that’s flammable.

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Rick Roybal: You’re talking about machinery that could kill you if you’re not paying attention. I’ve, I’ve read reports that would come in and some crane would be swinging something around with some guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time and

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Rick Roybal: You know, so that happens quite often. Um, so you’re high pressure, you know, with gas pressure and things like that. So it’s a very dangerous environment. So that’s part of that risk right there. Secondly, there’s a risk financial risk.

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Rick Roybal: That’s, that’s part of it you know you’re paying these people millions of dollars to perform these services. You want to validate that that you’re on.

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Rick Roybal: That what they are charging you is accurate. So you get the invoice and let me see the backup. Did you do this, was this person on that site. Okay.

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Rick Roybal: And then there’s just a an operational slash in a reputational risk that goes along with it as well. Operationally, is like if they can do it right then.

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Rick Roybal: It’s like

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Rick Roybal: Well, and that’s and that’s the case to it’s like hey, we can you know fracking and this kind of thing. And then the fracking doesn’t work. Well, that just cost you millions more dollars right yeah reputational wise.

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Rick Roybal: Have a

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Rick Roybal: Service provider that’s out there that spilling water or, you know, hydrocarbons that are it will it’s going out in the ground, there’s a there’s a

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Rick Roybal: An owner of that land. Who doesn’t want that. And then the company itself doesn’t want the reputation, like, well, that companies always

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Rick Roybal: You know, spilling stuff. So that’s why risk management’s important. I would say in on oil and gas perspective, let’s even go out a lot farther and it’s not the case that this doesn’t happen to own gas because

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Rick Roybal: There it is situation, but it’s let’s talk about the all of the laws that are happening right now with data privacy and it’s happening, you know, obviously, it started off kind of birth in Europe, and then, you know, California would be the most logical next place for things to happen, right.

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Jason Mefford: And the rest of the country. You’re welcome.

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For some

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Rick Roybal: Some of this clothing styles know things, but it

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Rick Roybal: But it but you know but it that that’s what’s happening. It’s this domino effect that that data privacy is important. I mean, there’s no doubt about it. Right.

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Rick Roybal: Yeah, and and so

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Rick Roybal: Who is it just the, the company that has the data inside know we are so many different third parties out there that have your data. Think about the companies like Iron Mountain or something like that, where they are.

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Rick Roybal: Either doing the storage from a facility standpoint, or they are taking off site documents to destroy them. That’s part of it. What about

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Rick Roybal: Healthcare records insurance types of records for employees. Well, that’s not you know the Edna’s and the other insurance companies are out there that’s. Those are third party risks for sure nowadays with companies being very Lean and Agile and things like that you have

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Rick Roybal: A lot of companies outsourcing their accounting and a few other companies, small or large and there is that risk. It goes with it. So I think that’s, I think we’re finally get it’s always, I don’t know, say it’s always been there, but I think it’s just grown so much that accompanies

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Rick Roybal: Economically, it’s makes a lot of economic sense to be able to give those types of jobs and services to third parties to manage and then you’ve got that risk that you’re pushing out to those groups. I think that’s why, that’s why it’s come to such a to the forefront.

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Jason Mefford: Well, it’s interesting because if we if we

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Jason Mefford: You know when I, when I talk about risk management, you know, a lot of times people

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Jason Mefford: You know, if you if you just kind of start back from the high level right kind of tie this together. Right.

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Jason Mefford: You know, normal. You think I talked about this 40s terminate tolerate treat or transfer right as far as like the four ways that you

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Jason Mefford: You know, like, like you said, the beginning. Let’s take the oil and gas example. Right. Okay. It’s a very highly capital intensive

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Jason Mefford: Business. I mean, you’re spending millions and billions of dollars billions of dollars. Sometimes on some of these fields and other stuff like that and so

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Jason Mefford: You know companies at that point. Come up with a strategy and say, look, we want to help transfer or share some of that risk with someone else.

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Jason Mefford: Right. So like you said upstream

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Jason Mefford: EMP companies usually joint ventures my

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Jason Mefford: Friends, they’re spending billions of dollars.

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Jason Mefford: If they don’t get a return

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Jason Mefford: They want somebody else to help share in the laws. But then they also have to share in the profit as well. Right.

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Jason Mefford: Or, like you said, you know, you’ve got a high fixed cost for a bunch of the the highly technical people

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Jason Mefford: To be employees or we hire a bunch of independent contractors where we’re sharing or transferring some of that risk outside of the organization.

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Jason Mefford: Now in classic risk management that’s usually where people kind of stop. Yeah, and that’s why vendor and third party risk management is now becoming a big deal because it’s like, no, no, no. Just because you’re sharing that are transferring a part of that you’re still the one that’s ultimately

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Jason Mefford: Liable right and so, like you said, if you get a contractor that ends up leaking out stuff you have an environmental claim they’re not going back to the contractor. They’re going back to the Big Oil Company.

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Rick Roybal: That’s right.

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Jason Mefford: To be able to get the money. And so now companies have finally realized, hold it. I actually have to do something.

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Jason Mefford: About this to make sure that people are representing me the way they’re supposed to. They’re doing the things they’re supposed to. So I don’t have some back end liability come in.

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Jason Mefford: That I wasn’t anticipating right and this even goes into there’s been a lot of different cases around, you know, an independent contractor that breaks the law.

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Jason Mefford: And the government comes in. Who do they find not the contractors. They go back against the deep pockets.

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Jason Mefford: And finally, people are starting to realize, hold it. Well, I thought I was. I thought I was offloading that risk. But I guess I’m not fully

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Jason Mefford: And so, you know, again, the need for these kinds of discussions, but it ultimately goes back to the strategy right if you change your strategy, you’re going to change some of your risks to

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Jason Mefford: End, even in your strategies of how you’re choosing to interact with some of those third parties as well.

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Jason Mefford: But yeah, and privacy just throws a whole nother layer on this for everybody.

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Jason Mefford: Hasn’t it examine

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Jason Mefford: Some of the biggest data breaches. It wasn’t the company who got blamed. It was the cloud service provider that breached, it that’s

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Rick Roybal: That’s exactly right. I just got an email the other day, I don’t know what it even though it was for. And there’s an arc provide our service provider their cloud backup.

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Rick Roybal: data breach. You know, it’s like you’ve been affected like okay, great. Yeah.

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Rick Roybal: So it’s it. That’s right. So it’s, there’s a lot of risk that that’s associated with that third parties. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: Well, so let’s go. The we’re having these discussions, right, because again, I mean, you don’t. You learn from others. You learn from others mistakes. She learned from others successes as well. Yeah, right. And that’s where some of these roundtables and other stuff can be so valuable for people

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Rick Roybal: Well, and it’s different. I may just interject a little bit more that it’s it’s one thing to talk about it. I think it’s also going to do about it to

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Rick Roybal: You know, that’s what’s interesting that’s happening in the in the oil and gas industry is that a lot of these operators.

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Rick Roybal: Recognize that there is a great need to manage and mitigate third party risk. And so they, you know, they either ring in house or

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Rick Roybal: They, you know, give it to someone else, another type of provider to help them with those risks. So I think it’s important to be able to be

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Rick Roybal: Doing with third party risk assessment and also third party audit, sir, just

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Rick Roybal: It’s it’s imperative that you do it because otherwise you’re just always relying on this this company may not know who they are. It’s like, Are you sure and

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Rick Roybal: And many times I’ve seen it and it’s and I understand we’re busy. We’re, we’re always busy and if you have the responsibility of signing off on an invoice.

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Rick Roybal: But that’s just a part of your job. You may not always give it the attention that it’s that’s required to do that because you just think it’s this routine thing. And what we, you know, call it as this that rubber stamping approval and I’ve seen where

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Rick Roybal: Some employees would be looking and reviewing at 500 invoices in a day, how in the

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Rick Roybal: You get any comfort over that. But the thing is is that that’s one area that says a problem. But if you need to have somebody that’s going on behind the scenes.

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Rick Roybal: validating that those that those records are corrected the invoices have meet all the standards prices are correct. The following your policies, etc. So it’s just, it’s just a much needed process that’s needed in in in all companies.

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Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: Well, and kind of the caveat on the other side of it because I tried to, you know, look at both sides of everything to is that we have to do it.

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Jason Mefford: It’s a risk, it has to be address, but it has to also be done in a practical means that makes economic sense. Right. And what I mean. From that is, is I’ve seen a lot of companies in their zeal to manage all third party risk they have created very onerous accounts payable processes.

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Jason Mefford: And I’ve seen hundreds of examples of this now of companies and let’s say it’s a $10,000 invoice for you know hundred plus million, if not billion dollar organization.

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Jason Mefford: And the vendor setup time the approval from legal the

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Jason Mefford: The PO the this, the that the whatever else they’re spending at least five grand.

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Rick Roybal: reviewing it.

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Jason Mefford: Reviewing a $10,000 invoice. And so, you know, you also have to kind of balance that and make it practical. Because you know it there, there is risk, but we need to manage risk intelligently as well.

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Rick Roybal: Good point. That’s excellent. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: Because like I said, I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this and I’ve

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Jason Mefford: Literally, this one one company. I was working with. It was a $10,000 buy

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Jason Mefford: It took six months to get the approval.

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Jason Mefford: It’s like, Come on, people pull out a credit card and pay for it. You know, it’s like, how much risk is there on a $10,000 purchase. Well, I can tell you the maximum is 10,000 yeah

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Jason Mefford: You

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Jason Mefford: Don’t spend five or 10,000 trying to mitigate a $10,000 risk.

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Jason Mefford: So anyway, yeah. All right. That’s just, just to the just the other side of it, too, because like I said I’ve, I’ve seen a lot of very well meaning people

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Jason Mefford: waste a lot of internal resources.

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Jason Mefford: Trying to do some of the stuff

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Jason Mefford: Well, Rick, as it always does. Time flies by when we get to talking but you know I really, really appreciate you coming on what you’re doing.

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Jason Mefford: You know how you’re trying to help the industry as well. And so, yeah, especially if anybody’s in oil and gas. Make sure you know go out and check out vendor roundtable calm.

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Jason Mefford: There’s the October event coming up. So get included in that and like you said, it doesn’t really matter where you’re out in the world, either. Right. I mean, if you’re in the oil and gas industry.

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Jason Mefford: Whether in any and to even regardless of which which part of the industry you’re in, as well, right up

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Jason Mefford: Mid or downstream doesn’t matter as well. Yeah.

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Rick Roybal: It’s a very, very inexpensive way to build it to connect with your peers very inexpensive way to get connected with your peers get CPS um and grow professionally. So I would encourage if you’re involved in the industry to join up with us.

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Jason Mefford: All right, well, sounds good. Well, hey, Rick. Thank you again.

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Rick Roybal: And I really appreciate it. It’s nice talking to you.

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Jason Mefford: Well, I’m sure we’ll have you on again in the future to you’re not getting out of it again.

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Jason Mefford: Part two part two. All right, well hey thanks

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Rick Roybal: I’m afraid. Right.

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Bye.

Fire & Earth Podcast E88: So You Want To Write A Book

It seems like everyone has writing a book on their bucket list. In this #fireandearthpodcast episode we discuss the options available for those of you that dream of writing a book, and some questions you should ask yourself before you head down that path.

Since Kathy and Jason have both written several books, both traditional and self published, you will hear practical advice on how to do it either way you choose.

Listen in at: http://www.jasonmefford.com/fireandearthpodcast/

#writingabook #author

Transcript

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Jason Mefford: Welcome to another episode of the fire and earth podcast, I’m your co host Jason Medford

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kathygruver: And I’m Kathy river and we are so excited to be back with you for another amazing episode. Today we are going to be talking about getting your book written and out there.

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kathygruver: Excited. I got a couple books, Jason. I got a few books you read a

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kathygruver: couple books, between the two of us. We got some books and I went, both the route of traditional publishing and self publishing and and so we are going to have a really good discussion about how to get your book written and how to get it out there. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: Well, and it’s funny you know in maybe just before we dive into a lot of the detail stuff because what I’ve found is several people that I coached

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Jason Mefford: They would say, I want to write a book. And I’m like, Okay, just a minute timeout. Right.

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Jason Mefford: Why do you want to write a book because I think that is

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Jason Mefford: That’s a big answer or big question that you have to ask yourself, and really answer before you just jump in because I don’t know what the numbers are. But it’s it’s some

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Jason Mefford: Crazy number like 80% of the people want to write a book right that’s on their bucket list. Well, you know, first off, think about why you want to write the book because it’s a lot of work.

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kathygruver: Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: And there are other ways to accomplish some of the same things.

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Jason Mefford: If maybe the book is just a vanity thing that you’re putting up there. So make sure that you that you answer that question first, because that’s a lot of work, because we’re going to start talking about and it

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Jason Mefford: It’s a long ride you know it’s it’s not like oh 30 days from now, I’m going to have a book published and can work that was

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Jason Mefford: A benchmark that way.

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Jason Mefford: So anyway, I just wanted to kind of preface with that. So, but, again, if you’ve kind of decided. No, I do want to write a book. Let’s go through now and kind of talk about

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Jason Mefford: Some of the different ways because like you said you’ve done traditional and self published I’ve kind of done the same thing and it. They’re both different routes. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: So, and again there’s there’s reasons to write a book reasons not to write a book.

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Jason Mefford: Don’t, don’t think you’re going to become Stephen King and a multimillionaire from it.

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kathygruver: Well, and not surprising. I couldn’t agree more.

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kathygruver: Because if you know why you’re reading the book and let’s say yes you do decide to write it. The y is going to determine which path you take for publishing

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kathygruver: If it’s a vanity project if you’re going to use it as a giveaway. If you want to give it to your clients if it’s going to act as a business card self publish it.

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kathygruver: No publisher is going to want to mess with that.

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kathygruver: If you’ve got multiple ideas if it’s better for a mass market if you’ve got marketing and name and stuff behind you, then by all means, try to do the traditional but know that that’s not an easy path that traditional publishing is

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kathygruver: Really difficult to do. And it’s time consuming 12 to 24 months how long it takes for a book to get published.

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kathygruver: That’s after you find the publisher sometimes publishers require that you have an agent. So they, you know, get an agent. First, an agent isn’t going to talk to you. If you only have one book. So it’s this whole complicated thing and

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Jason Mefford: They’re not going to talk to you. If you have no book.

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kathygruver: Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

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kathygruver: Yeah, so it’s, um, yeah. So how did you start, what was the idea behind you started with your books, Jason.

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Jason Mefford: So the first one I did actually was. It was self published and and the reason for it was you know I had is a technical book on risk based internal auditing. Okay. It was

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Jason Mefford: It was a concept that you know people had been talking about in our profession for a long time, but nobody was actually really doing it the way it was intended

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Jason Mefford: For when we started talking about this 2530 years ago and I could only find one other book that really talked about it the way that I believed it was intended to be

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Jason Mefford: And so, you know, I was teaching a course on this. I helped to develop a certification around it. And I thought, you know what I need to put down in words on paper.

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Jason Mefford: Right.

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Jason Mefford: What I’m talking about. And so I actually came up with kind of a whole methodology and a framework around how to do that.

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Jason Mefford: And decided to put it down in a book. Now again, it was the first time I self published a poetry book before that.

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Jason Mefford: But that’s more kind of

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Jason Mefford: The kind of thing, right, just because

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Jason Mefford: I for a while there I was writing a lot of poetry and I looked down and I went, holy crap I have over 100 poems I should actually

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Jason Mefford: Said, You didn’t know that about me.

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Jason Mefford: So it goes. It goes painting and poetry go in

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Jason Mefford: Veins for me and it seems to be about every 10 years as I look at the the dates on some of my paintings, it’s like, Oh, that one was 2009. Oh, this one was 2019

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kathygruver: year cycle.

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Jason Mefford: I’m on a 10 year cycle. But, um, but no, because I just wanted to be able to get it down on paper and and and kind of use it as, as you know, an additional revenue stream for some of the trainings that I taught

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Jason Mefford: You know, to be able to give it away as a giveaway or use it.

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Jason Mefford: As a lead magnet into doing the training with me and corporations. So that was that was why I kind of did it that way, you know, the idea to give it away and to sell it for you know $40 on my website and it’s still out there because that was back in

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Jason Mefford: I think 1414 when I finally actually got it published. But even still, you know, it’s, it’s a smaller book. I don’t know 120 hundred and 50 pages.

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Jason Mefford: But it still took a lot of time to be able to even come up with that you know you you’re realizing you look at the amount of time and then you look at your work product and you’re like, holy crap.

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Jason Mefford: You know, a lot of editing a lot of, you know, other stuff. And then when you go the self publishing route. You’ve got to do all the editing. You know, I used create space.

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kathygruver: I think it

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Jason Mefford: I think it was even before Amazon bottom or right around the

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Jason Mefford: Time. So I use that platform to be able to distribute it

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Yes.

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Jason Mefford: And well, actually. Actually, no, hold it. I did the poetry book on create space. I did the risk based audit one through book, baby.

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Jason Mefford: Which is kind of a hybrid model. So they it’s still self publishing, you’re still the publisher of the book.

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Jason Mefford: But they I set it up so that it would just be an E book really I ordered some books because they do have a printing deal so I ordered a couple of boxes of books, but their thing was, you know, they helped with the cover art.

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Jason Mefford: With, you know, putting it all together, getting it in the the different the Mobi PDF and let’s see other format because

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Jason Mefford: Anyway, there’s there’s different there’s two two main ebook formats as well, but they got that together and then they actually publish it to the different services.

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Jason Mefford: Right, so I worked through them.

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Jason Mefford: And then they actually put it out on Scribd and Kindle and Nook can all the different places. So my book is out there on Apple, and I don’t know, there’s a whole bunch of different things. Every time I get my royalty checks. I like, oh, I didn’t realize that was a book.

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Jason Mefford: Company, but anyway.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, I didn’t know I had it there, but I got some money from it. So there you go. Right. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: And then for me because I did that they actually handle all the royalties for me. So when when people buy it on you know Apple or Kindle, then each month.

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Jason Mefford: You know, I get a little I get some money that comes through that his my account. So they handle all of that side of it. Now, I had to pay them for that.

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Jason Mefford: So that’s, again, you know, it’s like somebody is paying for putting everything together. And depending on the model that you’re using depends on how much you’re going to pay when you pay it, things like that as well. Right.

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kathygruver: Exactly. I it’s funny because I once I get our live parallel I sort of did the same thing I did my first book I think in 2009 so it was quite a while back.

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kathygruver: I told somebody that I wanted to be a speaker.

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kathygruver: And they said, Oh, well, you have a book. Right. Oh my god, I want to be a speaker.

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Jason Mefford: Well, you have a book, right, because you have to have a book to be a speaker.

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kathygruver: Right, that’s what he told me, and I went, shit. I don’t really want to write a book like I never

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kathygruver: I had written. I’d written a book of short stories, which I self published so there’s that. But I was like, I don’t really want to write a book. And they’re like, Oh, no, no. You have to, like, Oh, crap. So I have a massage DVD. They’re like, that’s great. You need to write a book.

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kathygruver: So I sat down to write a book and I had all these ideas and I was going to do this like

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kathygruver: Surgical medical kind of alternative thing that i mean i had this great idea. And so I pulled all these books off the shelf and they were stacked in my living room. That’s what goes to hell reviews gonna sit here. I’m like, I don’t know.

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kathygruver: And then one day I was working on a client and it popped into my head. You just finished your training. I just finished my PhD at that point I had all these exercises I had to do all these papers. I had to write. I was doing tons of articles and so I thought you have your content.

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kathygruver: Like why are you trying to, you know, so I pulled every article, I’d ever ever written. I pulled all the exercises I had to do for school.

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kathygruver: All the case studies. I had to do. And I came up with the alternative medicine cabinet, which was then turned into a TV show, which I’ve been

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kathygruver: It’s pretty much out of print. Now, I haven’t even renewed it’s it’s so old. I would, by the time I updated it would be a whole new book.

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kathygruver: But I put together everything I had already written and I realized is hard as that was and I may because I’m a visual kinesthetic, I went and got note cards.

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kathygruver: And I put the different chapters on a note card and I spread them all out on the floor because at that point it was about intelligently organizing chapters.

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kathygruver: I didn’t have to rewrite much I did add a couple chapters into to round some stuff out.

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kathygruver: But at that point, it became, how can I organize this in a way that makes sense. So I remember it’s like standing on a chair and looking at all of these, these cards spread out on the floor to help me organize this book, I went with

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kathygruver: Self publishing. I went through a company called infinity, which I think still exists. It’s changed hands, a couple of times and I don’t want to disparage any company, but it, it seemed to kind of get a little. I don’t know that they use them again.

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kathygruver: You pay like 400 500 bucks.

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kathygruver: To set everything up and then you have to buy your copies, but they automatically put it on Amazon. They automatically send it out to different distributors and that sort of thing. So that was my first book experience was again the self published thing.

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kathygruver: And I remember working with a PR guy.

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kathygruver: He did this mass email blast and I had about 60 requests for radio and TV interviews book reviews all this stuff. And he goes, Okay, now when you send out the book. Make sure you include this sheet with it. And I went, what

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kathygruver: And he goes away when you send out the book and I wait wait wait, what

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kathygruver: What do you mean, when I send out the book, I can’t send out 60 books. And he goes, Why you have to, how are they going to review it. How are they want to see the book. And I was like,

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kathygruver: A. And he goes, let me let me guess. This is your first book. And I said, Yeah. And he goes, Okay, you’re gonna realize that that’s the best business card, you have

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kathygruver: And that you’re going to be giving this book away now. I was horrified. Right. I had just poured all this time and money at that point. That was a lot of money all this time and energy and money into this book and he’s telling me I can give it away.

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kathygruver: And now, of course, I’m like, Here, have a book, you know, it’s like it’s become a business card.

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kathygruver: But he was so right and I thought he was just this arrogant, you know, like you’d be giving it away like no I do now, you know, again, that one’s out of print, but

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kathygruver: But it’s, it is. It’s true. It’s it became one of the best business cards. And I don’t know if you found this to be true as well. The second you had a book.

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kathygruver: Did everyone just think you were more important than you were before you had the book which is ridiculous because I knew nothing more before the book that after the, you know, after the book than before the book.

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kathygruver: And then when you have more than one book. They’re like, You’re a genius like

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kathygruver: No, I just wrote

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Jason Mefford: No it’s, it’s the same thing there is and that’s why you know in the speaking industry or other places like that people push so hard for you to have a book.

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Jason Mefford: I remember Brian Tracy told me one time to he said that he he calls it BB and a, b, and like BC, AD.

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Jason Mefford: It’s like there was my career before book, there was my career after book right and this guy’s written. I don’t know. He’s like 70 or 80 books. Now it’s not

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kathygruver: even sure how that happened.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, well, I know, but

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Jason Mefford: We will talk about, but the anyway the

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Jason Mefford: So there’s yeah there’s kind of the different route. So again, if you’re going to go the self published way again realize you’re going to make an investment right so

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Jason Mefford: Again, I haven’t self published a book in that way in a while.

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Jason Mefford: So if you’re interested in that research, find out which companies are out there. Which ones are still doing it.

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Jason Mefford: Like I said, I think, but maybe it’s still doing it because they’re still paying me

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, but there’s other options. And I don’t know what what those other options are, but do your research. But realize if you’re going to self publish a book, you’re going to probably invest anywhere from 500 to maybe $2,000

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Jason Mefford: In cash cost, right, to be able to get it set up, do the cover, get it ready for publishing, if you’re going to buy hard copies of your books.

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Jason Mefford: But realize that’s going to be an investment that you’re going to make. Now another another way that a lot of people are doing self published books. Now, is there a book coaches.

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Jason Mefford: That actually pretty much kind of walk you through the whole process. They do all of the backend stuff for you, you’re still paying for that.

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Jason Mefford: And I think that I think the going rate on those is somewhere between 10 to

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Jason Mefford: $15,000 yeah yeah but what they do is, most of the people if if they’re good at what they do, they get you to

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Jason Mefford: Best selling status. OK, so there’s a lot of companies out there that do the best selling status. So just be careful.

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Jason Mefford: But realize what it is they know kind of how the algorithms and everything work and they publish your book on a particular day, they do some other stuff to drive more traffic to it. And so for a few days. Your book does very well and then nobody knows about it. Right.

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kathygruver: Can I tell you how much I hate that.

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Jason Mefford: And I just really express. For those of you who aren’t watching this

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kathygruver: I my eyes were rolled back so far. I thought I was gonna have to press my tongue down stop a senior, I hate that so much in every cell of my being, because you’re not a best seller you sold it for a nickel for a day on Amazon and

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kathygruver: You’ve got a sticker that drives me batch it. I hate that it is

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kathygruver: And anybody that knows looks at that sticker and goes, I know what you did. You gave your book. Oh, that is not bet you’re not a best seller.

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kathygruver: If you do that,

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kathygruver: I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sure I’m insulting somebody, but that is not make your best it drives me crazy. That is gaming the system. And I don’t like it.

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Jason Mefford: So just be aware

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Jason Mefford: That there’s a lot of people that are out there. So, but just realize what you’re getting into. For some people,

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Jason Mefford: That might work. Right. I mean, but just realize, again, somebody pays for all the work that has to be done.

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Jason Mefford: Yes, the difference between you paying like 500 to $2,000 is you’re doing most of the work right if you hire a coach or another company like that they’re doing more of the work for you. So obviously you have to pay them for their time and effort as well.

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kathygruver: Right. That seems like a lot. And the last two books. I did. I didn’t take to my publisher, because they were little.

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kathygruver: It was conquered your stress at work and workplace wellness. They were maybe 60 pages. My publishers not going to touch that.

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kathygruver: So I went through create space which is now Katie up on Amazon. So easy.

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kathygruver: If you’re going to self publish, please, please, please, please, please get an editor. Don’t get crazy Uncle Joe to do it unless crazy Uncle Joe is an editor.

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kathygruver: Don’t get a friend, unless unless they’re an English major and they know what they’re doing. I have read so many self published books that

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kathygruver: desperately need editing. There’s typos and their spelling errors and there was a sentence. It takes up an entire page. Please, please, please have it professionally edited.

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kathygruver: Make sure you choose a good cover.

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kathygruver: Not, I mean it is important.

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kathygruver: It’s not going to be on a shelf somewhere probably because when you self publish it’s incredibly difficult to get into bookstores, so if you dream of having your book in a brick and mortar store.

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kathygruver: Unless you go to individual bookstores like we have one in here in town called Chaucer’s

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kathygruver: If you are a local author or a self published author, you can take your book to them. They do a 6040 split, which sounds great, except when you realize you purchase your book for 50%. So you’re basically getting like a buck per book.

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kathygruver: It’s not a way to make a lot of money. And I think people assume that because I’ve written books. I kind of, I shouldn’t hold that I record my podcast I play with my cat my guinea pig and I just raking in the dough.

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Jason Mefford: Just rolls and then

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kathygruver: I got my, my last my last royalty from Katie P was a buck 39 for a couple audiobooks, you know if this is not a big moneymaker, you’re not going to be the next

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kathygruver: Stephen King or JK Rowling or, you know, it just, it happens for very few people but books do serve another great purpose, Jason, what does that

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Jason Mefford: Books.

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Jason Mefford: Well, I like to read them.

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kathygruver: Okay, so

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Jason Mefford: They give you credibility.

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kathygruver: Right, that’s what I. Yep.

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Jason Mefford: That’s that’s the main thing is it gives it gives you credibility and it allows it allows it, like, like we were talking about before it’s it’s a glorified business card.

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Jason Mefford: Or kind of a lead magnet. So if you’re in the online space, a book can often act as a great lead magnet. Just to get people

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Jason Mefford: Used to you and some of your concepts and things like that. Right, it’s it’s it’s a way for them, you know, if they go out and they pay you know three bucks five bucks 50 bucks for your book. It gives them an opportunity for a low price point to get to know you. Right.

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Jason Mefford: But yeah, you know, the. And that’s why, again, we started off with. Why do you want to write a book. If you think you’re going to be a millionaire sitting at home in the lap of luxury ain’t gonna happen folks.

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Jason Mefford: But, but your book can serve you in the end warming up, people are being able to use it for a way to go to other higher ticket things right. So it’s the same thing. Like with speaking

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Jason Mefford: You know, if you’re charging 20 505,010 25,000 for a speech, right. That’s where your book ends up, you don’t make money on the book you make money on the other services that you provide your book is just a way to help give you credibility. Yeah.

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kathygruver: Though, I have to say, the way I sell most copies of my book or back of the room after I talk

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kathygruver: Because everybody’s jazzed everybody wants a piece of view.

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kathygruver: And I remember speaking at a women’s luncheon in Dallas. I have never seen so many beautiful well put together women in my life. The hair the makeup, the purses. Everybody was just so

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kathygruver: Beautiful the shoes like nobody missed a beat on this and I was speaking to. I think maybe 150 women.

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kathygruver: We had a blast. We laughed the entire time. It was rowdy, it was fun. And I brought a bunch of books with me. And at the end of the line was through the restaurant where they had the luncheon.

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kathygruver: Waiting to get my books and I would have people because at that point. I think I brought five of them and they go boop boop boop boop boop. I’ll take all of them.

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kathygruver: And I sold

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kathygruver: So, and I said to one woman like well, those who are pretty simple. She’s like, I don’t care. I’ve had people say, I’m never going to read these but you’re amazing and I want your books like okay, you know, so

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kathygruver: If you’re going to sell the book if you want to sell the books. That’s the way I sell, most of them barely any on Amazon, because how are you found on Amazon, you know,

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kathygruver: It’s really hard to be found online. And I think what was the stat that I read the majority of self published books don’t sell more than 200 copies

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Jason Mefford: It’s probably about right.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, yeah. I mean, cuz because normally and another number same low, but if you if you sell 3000 books. That’s pretty. That’s pretty good. That’s really good. Right.

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Jason Mefford: So yeah, I think it. Think about how you’re using it, you know. And so we’ve talked a little bit about the the self published thing. So we probably should.

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Jason Mefford: transition a little bit into

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Jason Mefford: Into the traditional experience and then maybe talk about

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Jason Mefford: How you can actually get started because we’ve already mentioned a couple of those things. But we’ll come back to that. Here at the end so traditional is a totally different route. Right. Yeah.

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kathygruver: Yeah, so, um, when I was looking for traditional publishers, most of them will not take unsolicited manuscripts.

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kathygruver: So you can’t just get ahold of Simon and Schuster, and be like, I got a Bach, they’re gonna throw it away. They don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to talk to you.

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kathygruver: If you want to get to a medium to bigger size publisher, you have to go through an agent getting an agent is just as hard as getting a publisher, because again you have to have a track record.

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kathygruver: If you have a self published book already that sold really well. And they’re talking over four or five steps and coffee if it looks like that’s a lot of self published books to sell you might get an agent. There are

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kathygruver: In the days that we could actually be in person, they would have these giant almost like speed dating things where you could talk to different agents and publishers. There’s a big one. Every year in New York.

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kathygruver: Very expensive to go to. But if you get your agent or your publisher out of it. It’s worth it when you go to a traditional publisher.

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kathygruver: If they take manuscripts, they want to they don’t want to see the whole manuscript right off. They want a cover letter. They want a 30 to 50 page.

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kathygruver: What your book looks at what you know a summary of the book. They want to know possible titles. They want to know how you’re going to market it. They want to know five other books in that industry that are competition.

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kathygruver: They want to know your social media marketing plan. They want to know your mailing list. They want to because they are not going to sell this book for you. You still have to do the work. And I’ve heard so many people say, I’m going to get a big advance

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Jason Mefford: Not anymore.

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kathygruver: Not anymore. And remember, even if you do, let’s say they give you a $5,000 advance

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kathygruver: It’s an advance you have to pay that back. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: You earned it out of your future royalties.

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kathygruver: It comes out of your future royalties and royalties typically come only a year. Sorry, falling out there.

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kathygruver: Only come a year after you sell the book. So anything you sell the first quarter of the year, you’re probably not going to see till fall

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kathygruver: And you’ve got to now pay that 5000 back off those royalties. So you might not see royalties for five or six years, depending on the book. So it’s not an easy path.

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kathygruver: I was very lucky and finding my publisher very, very lucky I hit just at the right time and they actually republished some of my self published books which is also unheard of that rarely if ever happens. So I really lucked out with that. So what was and I know you did the tradition.

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kathygruver: Yeah, well, so

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, yeah. Well, and I was gonna say, cuz kind of from what you just talked about to one of the important points that people probably skipped over is

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Jason Mefford: Even if you go with a traditional publisher, you still have to sell your book. They’re going to market. They’re going to publish it, they’re going to put it out in different places.

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Jason Mefford: But if you’re not doing things to market your book just because it’s sitting on a shelf in Barnes and Noble doesn’t mean anybody’s going to buy it right

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Jason Mefford: And so, you know, you still have to do the book tours, the different whatever marketing, you’re going to do to be able to help push that book. Right. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: As well.

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kathygruver: And again, you’re it’s still not a guarantee that you’re going to sell a lot of copies. Yeah, and royalties are very low. Um, I know.

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kathygruver: My ex wrote multiple books and a lot of them came from a traditional publisher and I remember reading the contracts and

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kathygruver: thinking, Wow, this is all book contracts that I’ve ever seen in my attorney told me this when I was when I showed her my book contract. She’s like there. I’ve never seen a book contract that benefits the author, it’s

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kathygruver: All it’s

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kathygruver: All about the publisher. I mean, they’ll give you, they’ll give you five author copies and you’re like,

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kathygruver: That’s Mom That’s my, that’s one for me that’s like, give me 20 author copies and they’re so low to do that for you.

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kathygruver: For things like promotions, so you’re probably gonna have to buy your own books to give them to the PR people, it’s, it’s a, why do we do this.

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Jason Mefford: Well, that’s why I started off with. Why do you really want to buy a book.

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Jason Mefford: A book right

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kathygruver: Exactly. I’m working on my eighth and now I’m going to do this anymore. I want to

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, so with me. One of the other routes that I went, it was a little bit different traditional publisher, but it was a textbook.

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Jason Mefford: Kind of an idea right so it’s it’s there was a there’s a internal auditing, there’s a there’s a book called Sawyer’s internal auditing.

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Jason Mefford: Written many, many years ago, but it’s gone through different revisions and versions. And so I was asked to help contribute to the seventh edition of that book.

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Jason Mefford: And so it was effectively you know there were, I don’t know 10 or 15 of us that you know the the book was broken up into different chapters.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, and and we kind of worked on different parts of the book that were topic related to our, our area of expertise.

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Jason Mefford: Alright, cool.

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Jason Mefford: OK. And then, but again, traditional publisher. So there was the whole you know book outline. There was somebody who was really kind of the editor and the subject matter expert trying to pull you know heard all of our cats, all of us cats together.

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Jason Mefford: Yep, and make the book flow but but you know with that. There’s a lot of back and forth and back and forth and even on that, you know, I expressed

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Jason Mefford: A lot of concern that what I felt like I needed to say was going to be watered down in the editing. So I almost didn’t even do the book.

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Jason Mefford: But got some assurances and knew a couple of people that would be editing it at the end of the day, it wasn’t

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Jason Mefford: It was 90% of what I had hoped for, which was good. Now, that was one where, because of the nature of the book, the publisher was really paying us a flat fee up front.

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Jason Mefford: And we were giving them effectively the IP so that they can make the money on the back end. So I got a little I got some money up front for it.

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Jason Mefford: Economically, it wasn’t worth the time that I put in, but because of the prominence of that book in my industry. I wanted my name in the list of authors.

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Jason Mefford: Yep. So I went ahead and did I didn’t do it for the money.

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Jason Mefford: I did it for the industry credibility.

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kathygruver: Yeah, that’s, that’s an amazing. That’s really cool. I think I probably would have done it as well. I want to go back to something you said that you were concerned about having your stuff watered down in the editing and

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kathygruver: You lose so much control when you go with a traditional publisher and I remember being at one of my first conferences. I was just there as an attendee

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kathygruver: And there was a woman sitting next to me and she had the stack of books. And I said, oh, did you did you buy these here. Is there a place to buy books. And she goes, Oh no, I wrote these

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kathygruver: And I went, Whoa. So smartest thing ever. Everybody that walked by stopped and asked her about those books she sold every single book she brought

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kathygruver: So I looked at her books and she had two that were traditionally published by big publishers

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kathygruver: And to that were self published and this is before I wrote any of my books. I was so green. I didn’t know anything

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kathygruver: And I said, oh, so can I ask you about the publishing of this because, absolutely. I said, so I’m assuming you wrote the self published ones and then later. You got a publisher. She goes, absolutely. The other way.

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kathygruver: I said, Really, why would you give up a big traditional publisher to self publish books. So that seems really weird to me and she said, Cathy

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kathygruver: The third book. I wanted to do it was going to be 30 months out from publication.

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kathygruver: They wanted to change the title. They wanted to change the headshot, they wouldn’t let me do footnotes. She said it was no longer my book and I pulled out of the contract.

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kathygruver: She said I self published it in six weeks with my title with my book. It was my book, she said, I am a control freak. I’m time sensitive. I was not going to wait 30 months to get barely paid for a shitty book that wasn’t even mind anymore. And I was like,

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kathygruver: Oh,

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kathygruver: Yeah, and Michael dealt with that too, with a cover that was so hard. I mean, they, they made choices.

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kathygruver: And then got mad that he wanted to argue with the choices you know me knows this. So I’ve heard horror stories about working with publishers

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, so if you want more control go the self publishing route.

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Jason Mefford: The other thing too, you know, is, is kind of that cautionary tale is if you’re going to go with a traditional publisher, make sure you actually review the contract because sometimes you’re effectively, you know, signing over and they are buying the IP from you.

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Jason Mefford: Yep. And so you don’t really have any control about doing anything with that in the future.

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kathygruver: Yeah, right. Yeah.

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kathygruver: Have an attorney, look it over. I got a literary attorney. I think she charged me 500 bucks, which might have been more than I ever made in royalties.

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kathygruver: But it is she fixed. I mean, there were parts or she’s like, this isn’t right. And you got to fix that. And, you know, please have someone look it over that knows what they’re doing. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: Well, so then if we transition a little bit into kind of how to write it. And we’ve already kind of told you this, and you don’t even really hardly realize it right but

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Jason Mefford: You know, there’s different ways to write it. But just like what Kathy did say look at what you already have. Right. So a lot of books are written based on people’s blogs

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Jason Mefford: Well, if you’ve been a blogger for if you’ve

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Jason Mefford: Been a blogger for a while. You’ve got a lot of content, you know, Kathy, you had all your stuff from your PhD program.

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Jason Mefford: My that risk based on a book that was based on a five day training that I had already developed. Okay, so I pretty much already had the outline

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Jason Mefford: I just had to explain in tax. What I was normally explaining in a five day training session. So you already kind of have the outline so

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Jason Mefford: So look at what there is that you already have. And then, like you said, you know, you can put them on.

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Jason Mefford: You know note cards or whatever lay them all out and you’ve already got kind of the outline for what it is that you’re going to do another way that that people do it as well as you can just kind of journal, a little bit every day.

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Jason Mefford: So, so one of the

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Jason Mefford: books that I’m reading right now, just from the reading from the, from the writing style and the way the book is actually set up. I could tell that it’s it’s kind of three parts to it.

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Jason Mefford: They’re very small chapters and what it appears, is he probably sat down and wrote for half an hour or an hour each day.

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Jason Mefford: And because a lot of it was was kind of experiential it was what he was going through what he was feeling the experiences that were going on.

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Jason Mefford: And so that’s another way that you can kind of sit down and start writing something to very similar to blog posts, but you’re just kind of journaling or or getting a little bit out each day. Right.

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Jason Mefford: That’s and that’s the thing is

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Jason Mefford: If you’re, if you’re going to do this, you know, a lot of people talk about writing retreats, which are great. You can do that.

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Jason Mefford: But it depends on kind of your writing style as well.

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Jason Mefford: But showing up and doing a little bit each day is better than thinking, oh, I’m just going to cram everything into a week.

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Jason Mefford: Usually usually doesn’t happen if you try to cram and that’s why the Stephen. Press, press field or pressman press. I think it’s press field. The, the, the war of art.

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Jason Mefford: Is a great book to read about this and his one of his points in there is. It’s like, look, you know, creating art and writing a book is art.

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Jason Mefford: You’ve got to be willing to show up and actually do something because he says, you know, the muse. A lot of people sit around and go all I have writer’s block. I have to wait for the muse to show up. Right.

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Jason Mefford: But in his book he’s like every time I sit my butt down in the chair at 9am the muse shows up right because he he does that consistently and

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Jason Mefford: A lot of other writers of the same way Hemingway, and I was the same way he he put his button. The chair every day at a certain time and he wrote like it was his job because it was. Yeah.

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kathygruver: Exactly. No, I love so much of what you’re saying about you know you. I think we have to find a style that works for us. I tend to dictate. So my books sound.

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kathygruver: And I get I love this compliment. It sounds like you’re reading it to me. Good. Because I dictated it I’m not one to sit down as fast as I type

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kathygruver: My brain and mouth works faster than typing. So I tend to dictate I wrote my last book driving to and from LA to go to trapeze because I click on the recorder and I would translate stuff. I mean, you can use something like Tammy. I actually use the notes feature on the phone.

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kathygruver: Which is good until it goes ping and then you realize it stopped me mid sentence and you don’t remember what you were saying.

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kathygruver: So there’s a lot of great ways you can dictate it I’ve suggested that to so many people and they love that idea.

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kathygruver: I am not a sudden my button. The chair every day at the same time to write and it happens. I don’t work that way. I get the urge to write and I’ll sit down. I’ll tear out an hour to

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kathygruver: And then maybe won’t happen for other day, a couple days. The only time I had to force myself to write was when I was doing my dissertation and I hated every second of it.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: I’m crunch. Yeah.

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kathygruver: Oh, I had a time and I hated it. I remember sitting there typing and typing and going

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kathygruver: I can’t write anymore.

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kathygruver: My code behind me was hands on me. He goes,

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kathygruver: I think you have to. And I’m like, I know. And he’d had me wide. And I’m like,

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kathygruver: Okay.

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kathygruver: I actually thanked. Why did it on the intro to my dissertation, because it like it got me through. It’s like I had to write and I hated it.

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kathygruver: And I hated the style of that it was so stilted and you couldn’t say I and you couldn’t say, I mean it the right the way you enjoy writing

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kathygruver: I write, I have a little asides, and I’m slightly Reverend I swear, a little bit. And because I’m dictating. It sounds very natural, like I’m talking, that is, to me as my writing style.

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kathygruver: Find your own voice. And this is one of the reasons I’m not a huge fan of ghost writing to me it’s like if you have something to say, then just put it down and say it in your words and your tone.

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kathygruver: I don’t quite get the idea of someone else writing your stuff then because you didn’t write it, but that’s a whole nother thing, um,

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Jason Mefford: Well, and like you said, there’s a lot of different options now because we can actually dictate

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Jason Mefford: There’s a lot of technology that can do that. You can transcribe anything. So, you know, the same thing even like with with podcasts or

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Jason Mefford: Videos that you’re doing, you can actually get those transcribed. You know, there’s several different services like I know Tammy has one I use rev calm.

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Jason Mefford: You know where you can either for 10 cents per minute. I think it is. It’s something like 10 cents a minute. If you have the computer do it or $1 a minute if you actually have a human, go back and kind of added it. Yeah.

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kathygruver: 1010 is much cheaper.

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Jason Mefford: It’s to me to even cheaper than 10 spots.

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kathygruver: promo yeah

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kathygruver: Okay, yeah.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, so you can get it most of the time is run through a computer. So there is going to be some editing this you’re going to have to do by

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, it’s, it’s still pretty accurate it’s 90 plus percent accurate, it may get some of the context things wrong or stuff like that. But it’s still pretty good and easy. At least then if you’re if you’re more of a talker than a taper. Then there’s another option for you to do it.

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kathygruver: Exactly. I was dictated because I also use. I’ve got a Mac. And so I hit Command twice I can dictate anything into my computer and it changes it into words. And you know I do my mini meditation, which is inhale, I am exhale at peace. And that’s what I was dictating

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kathygruver: And repeat. I am at peace.

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kathygruver: I think that’s a whole different meditation piece in hand, I was going to be something about a piece or something.

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kathygruver: No.

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kathygruver: I am asked me, like, oh ok so

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kathygruver: Anyway, we’ve like this is now like but a 45 minute show so we should probably stop talking.

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Jason Mefford: All right, but yeah hopefully again for anybody that you know if you’re interested in writing a book and I know most people are, you know, ask yourself, why, why do you want to do the book, you know, realize what what the more likely outcomes will be from doing it.

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Jason Mefford: You know, get rid of some of the beliefs of, oh, I’m just going to be a millionaire and sit on the beach. You know, when I write my my blockbuster. It happens to very few people

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Jason Mefford: It could happen to you that might be in your in your, you know, karma, but it’s for for most of us. Books are a way to just add credibility to what you already do.

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Jason Mefford: And use that as a way to leverage the other products and services that you’re actually offering

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kathygruver: And to share knowledge and help people. I mean, let’s not forget that part of the reason. The other reason I wanted to write books is to reach more people and share what I know about stress reduction and I know you wrote to help them get through this. The the

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kathygruver: Audit stuff that you do so, you know, there. We don’t want to gloss over this whole helping people. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: The whole helping part

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, no.

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Jason Mefford: No.

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kathygruver: Well, I should say. And when you know the why that helps inform whether you’re going to do traditional or

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kathygruver: Or self published. So that’s it.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, or even at the end because I was gonna throw into that I forgot before is, you know, I went back and looked at that book that I wrote back in 2014 I thought, you know, I probably should update that

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Jason Mefford: But then again, I had to. I looked at the why. What am I trying to do. I’m trying to help people. I’m trying to get content out to them faster.

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Jason Mefford: And so for me, instead of, you know, doing a revision on that book. I actually created a 30 hour course.

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Jason Mefford: Online Course instead. Right. So, so I chose to do to go that route to provide the information to people in a video format online course instead of a book.

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Jason Mefford: Because I could do that quicker. Right. And I felt like, you know, again, it was a better learning environment for people and you know I could charge a lot more for that than I could for the book, too.

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kathygruver: I agree.

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Jason Mefford: And so there’s there’s other options like that as well. So don’t feel like you have to do the book. There’s, there are some other options out there as well.

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kathygruver: That’s absolutely true. And we can have an entire segment on doing online courses because I have one and it’s failed miserably.

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kathygruver: And I don’t know why.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, it’s a hard business.

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kathygruver: Yeah, I know. I think, I think I did too late. Anyway, you know, timing is everything.

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kathygruver: Anyway, oh my god, this has been so fun.

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kathygruver: But here’s the other thing. Don’t think about it is reading a book that’s really intimidating write a sentence that turned into a paragraph that turns into a chapter and then you have a whole book.

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kathygruver: You know, it’s the whole eating the elephant. We have to bring the elephant back and eating the elephant one spoonful at a time so

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Jason Mefford: Don’t have an animal, and every episode.

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kathygruver: Yeah, little

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kathygruver: Okay, so this was great. Go out, write your book, let us know how it goes. Let us know if you have any questions, we could both help you through this

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kathygruver: I’m Kathy Gruber. I can be reached at Kathy group com

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Jason Mefford: And I’m Jason method I can be reached at Jason method calm, so go out and we’ll see you on next week’s fire and earth podcasts. Have a great week.

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kathygruver: Yeah.

Fire & Earth Podcast E86: Laughing Every Day with Sarah Routman

Can something as simple as laughing each day actually improve your health? Absolutely.

Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we respond. Laughter can help keep everything in perspective, and the more we practice it, the better we get at seeing things in a fresh and more light-hearted way. Instead of crying, try laughing and it will make all the difference.

We are join by Sarah Routman an expert in laughter therapy and laughter yoga. This #fireandearthpodcast will get you laughing and show you some simple exercises you can use each day to increase your health, #happiness, and well-being.

Sarah is a champion of overall wellness, and inspires and motivates individuals and professionals to engage in healthy laughter for a vibrant, uplifting and transformative shift in all aspects of their lives that leads them towards better health and wellbeing.

Learn more and connect with Sarah at: https://www.laughhealthy.com/

Transcript

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kathygruver: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the fire and earth podcast, I’m your co host Kathy gruver

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Jason Mefford: And I’m Jason Medford, and today we have Sarah Troutman with us and we’re so excited. If you guys are watching you see a bunch of stuff about laugh in the background. So Sarah. Tell us a little bit about yourself, because I’m guessing we’re gonna be doing some laughing, too.

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Sarah Routman: Well, in fact, I want to start by asking your listeners have you laugh today because really, that is, to me, the most important question that a person can ask, because if the answer is no.

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Sarah Routman: Then you need to tune into one of my things because I need to get you laughing and why. Why would I want to get you laughing Well that’s, that’s my story. My story is

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Sarah Routman: That I teach people how to access purposeful playful laughter with no jokes, because it’s a really serious thing. Laughter There are so many health benefits that you can get

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Sarah Routman: You can get your heart moving faster and actually clean the plaque that’s building up in your arteries, so much so that doctors heart doctors are literally writing prescriptions for their patients. That’s a laugh for 15 minutes a day. Good belly. LAUGHS

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Sarah Routman: Which is great for me.

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Sarah Routman: But, and you can actually increase the oxygen, oxygen flow in your body. Even better. Laughter addresses sad you become less stressed, anxious and depressed, you can

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Sarah Routman: decrease pain, fear, we laughed when we’re anxious when we are feeling awkward.

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Sarah Routman: And so, the good news is you don’t need a sense of humor, life doesn’t need to be treating you well you can be filled with stress overwhelm

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Sarah Routman: A little bit of code that is, you know, like, really pent up cabin fever. If you can learn and hopefully in the next 20 minutes I’m going to teach you how to put in some playful. Laughter You’re gonna change your life.

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Sarah Routman: And that’s my goal is to change your life with laughter because my lap my life.

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Sarah Routman: Was changed with laughter 28 years ago and I’ve been laughing ever since.

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kathygruver: That’s so great.

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Jason Mefford: I think it’s funny, because when you when you’re saying that I kind of flash back to this experience I had when I was in fourth grade.

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Jason Mefford: Right. So, and it’s like one of the teachers. She was my teacher, but we would do like this singing time right and so she would she had a guitar. She would play the guitar.

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Jason Mefford: All of the kids in the third and fourth grade would get together and play right and she she sang a song about goober peas, which is a

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Jason Mefford: Peanut peanuts. Right.

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Jason Mefford: But she explained the song.

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Jason Mefford: That it came from the civil war time period when people were starving and all they had to eat was peanuts. And I remember her saying, and it was a lesson I learned there, you know, we can either cry about it.

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Jason Mefford: Or we can laugh about it. Right. And so, you know, again, I think at those times, probably, I’m guessing like you said you know 28 years ago when this really helped you.

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Jason Mefford: There’s a lot of times, maybe when we feel like crying and sometimes crying is is the right emotion to be feeling and doing. But if we can laugh, instead of crying, like you said, there’s all these different health benefits to it.

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Sarah Routman: So well, in fact, my favorite quote is by Irving Berlin and it is life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond

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Sarah Routman: Absolutely. And it is so true, because the laughter that I encourage people to put into a given situation can change your situation.

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Sarah Routman: But indirectly, it may because it does literally change your mindset and change your brain chemistry, physiologically, you change when you laugh.

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Sarah Routman: And that puts things in your body that help to clarify things to help give you a clean slate and actually what happens just if you’ll both smile for me for a second and keep smiling while I talk just a big smile. That’s great.

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Sarah Routman: So while you’re doing that endorphins are rushing to your brain. And they’re sending cortisol, which is the stress hormone away.

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Sarah Routman: And they’re inviting serotonin and dopamine, which are the feel good chemicals into your body and things set up camp here.

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Sarah Routman: And now when you laugh you release more of those same feel good chemicals. So you’re changing your body chemistry, you’re changing your brain.

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Sarah Routman: Right away, so you can’t physiologically be angry and laugh at the same time. So imagine what would happen.

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Sarah Routman: If a person was in an argument with a partner or spouse, a roommate and then instead of letting the anger escalate. They went over to them and said can we hold hands for a second please look at me. Let’s just laugh for a second.

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Sarah Routman: I’m not laughing at you. But can we just laugh for a second, you would change the brain chemistry between you

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Sarah Routman: And the research also says that when you make eye contact with someone and share. Laughter

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Sarah Routman: You can’t. You actually begin to share more honest things about yourself whether you’re laughing with a stranger or friend. So imagine how that can de escalate.

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Sarah Routman: For an anger management class or a team that has a lot of stress and a lot of anger happening kids on the playground. This is a great anti bullying tool.

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Sarah Routman: And so it just, it’s so powerful. And that’s why I do it is that when I learned the power of laughter. I couldn’t stop doing. I wanted to share with everyone.

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kathygruver: So a couple things came to mind. My favorite client ever Dorothy. She died when she was 96 she would she was holy. I mean, she was a hoot anyway stories like out about her every day, she would throw her head back and make yourself. LAUGH

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Sarah Routman: Oh, yeah.

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kathygruver: She did that for me a couple of it was. It was so fun. And so awesome and I also I think about, was it Norman Cousins.

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Sarah Routman: Absolutely.

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kathygruver: Who wrote the book, who, who was diagnosed with being so sick. And I had him in the hospital. And he said, no, I’m going home and he watched what Three Stooges videos every day.

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Sarah Routman: Yeah, and yeah.

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kathygruver: Yeah, Marx Brothers. That was it, and he laughed himself well

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kathygruver: As much power in that. So let me, let me ask you this. So they’re not from what you’re saying there’s not necessarily a connection between happy and laughter Now

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kathygruver: Whenever you because I think people say, Well, I’m not in a good mood today. I can just laugh at something or you can laugh or whatever you want.

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Sarah Routman: In fact, when you’re not in a good mood is the exact time to laugh when you’re feeling in a funk. In fact,

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Sarah Routman: I’m doing this all out of order. But I’m going to just share this with you anyway so

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Sarah Routman: You’re in a funk. You’re in a bad mood, you know that you want to change it. But you don’t know how. So I’m going to suggest that you just tap your shoulder. You can do this with me.

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Sarah Routman: Just pretend like someone’s tapping on your shoulder like who is it. Oh, it’s this guy. It’s my girlfriend and he’s gonna tap and annoy me until I engage and giggle with him. So go ahead, let’s

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Sarah Routman: I know you’re not gonna stop it.

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Sarah Routman: And when I do that, he’s gonna jump up and down because my guy is

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Sarah Routman: A little giggle emoji finally legs and little

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Just laughing at Jason

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kathygruver: With any other guy. He wants to tend to do. It’s like okay

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kathygruver: I’m just thinking comment to edit this. And if I can actually get a little cartoon like I’m picturing a little annoyed from dominoes, a little annoying.

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Sarah Routman: But it’s true because what happens is nothing was funny life wasn’t good, you know, the moment was not so fabulous. But I did so many things in this moment I first shifted my attention.

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Sarah Routman: Yes, before I even started to engage. I’ve already shifted my attention. And now once I do engage on flooding myself with these great hormones, but I’m also being present to this moment.

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Sarah Routman: Instead of whatever all that is. And now because I’ve shifted my brain chemistry. Now when I come back to this.

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Sarah Routman: The hope the premises. It doesn’t look quite so bleak I I’ve cleared my brain. I’ve taken the stress out of the brain. It’s like you just literally sent in a bunch of little movers and they said okay stress out of out you go

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Sarah Routman: And now when I look at it, it doesn’t look so bad. And so I have a fresh look a fresh approach and now that’s when creativity can come in.

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Sarah Routman: And so it really isn’t about happy. It’s about Joy. Joy is in the moment. Happy is subjective. It’s about is my life. Good to have a good relationship. Am I be with my money situation and the answer to a lot of those things right now for a lot of people is, no, no, no, no, no.

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Sarah Routman: Right and

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Sarah Routman: Oh, but

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Sarah Routman: You can find joy, no matter what. And if you can’t find it. You can put it in right

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kathygruver: Well, it’s so funny because I i I’m a coach and I have so many people say, I just want to be happy. So what does that mean, and they can’t tell me what that means.

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kathygruver: Right and happiness is something we create with every moment. It’s not something that happens to us, and I see so many people seeking happiness outside of themselves. They’re waiting for that.

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kathygruver: That that identification with that title with that girl with that car with the cat with the, you know, and they’re not finding these things inside ourselves and

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kathygruver: What I love about what you’re saying is, this is something that we are tapping literally into whenever we need it whenever we want it, Jason. I just love the grid that you have on your face.

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Jason Mefford: Looks like all these funny things that you’re saying to right and it’s it’s it was. And it’s kind of tying into because

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Jason Mefford: You know, we’re talking about you talking about happiness. Right. And we all want to be happy.

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Jason Mefford: But scientifically. How do we usually happiness is defined as subjective well being. That’s what we call her.

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Jason Mefford: Subjective well being.

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Jason Mefford: Because it’s based on the person’s own subjectivity of their current circumstance right on us on a sliding scale. So that’s, that’s how they measure happiness is usually through subjective well being. But, you know, again, it’s not

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Jason Mefford: That it because it is subjective and and I love what you said that joy is different from happiness.

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Jason Mefford: Because again, I’ve been. I’ve been kind of this is actually one of the things I’ve been thinking about recently because

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Jason Mefford: In one of the books that I wrote one of the affirmations is I am joy and thinking, Okay, what’s the difference really between joy and happiness. Right. And how can you be joyful and and joking and laughing, you know, even though you may not feel happy.

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Jason Mefford: Right. But I love to what you said about moving the attention because just doing a simple exercise like hey, my, my giggling guy is on my shoulder.

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Jason Mefford: Right, you know,

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Jason Mefford: Right.

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Sarah Routman: All right.

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Jason Mefford: Jason weirdo. But you move your attention. Sometimes your attention doesn’t need to go back either

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Jason Mefford: That’s one of the biggest things about getting out of the emotion is

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Jason Mefford: Move your attention to something else.

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Sarah Routman: Exactly. Well,

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Jason Mefford: And. LAUGHTER It’s a higher emotion in your mood.

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Sarah Routman: And one of the best things about laughter yoga, which is how I started well my. That was the second step, I’ll go back and tell you the story of how I got to this in a moment.

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Sarah Routman: But I usually start a session with something called smile ups. It’s like push ups for your mouth. So just smile and then relax and smile.

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Sarah Routman: And relax and you can be as goofy as you want. It doesn’t matter. So when we do laughter yoga. There are two rules. We always try to make eye contact and if you’re alone, then you can

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Sarah Routman: You can use a mirror. But you can also make yourself a little smile buddies. You can have someone smile with you or you can cheat and get one of these guys.

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Sarah Routman: And then they need to smile laugh at each other. It’s also all about play but I start with smile ups because a lot of times people feel a little awkward about laughing on purpose.

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Sarah Routman: And the thing about laughing on purpose, that’s important is the second rule of laughter yoga is that we suspend judgment. However, you show up and laugh as okay. It doesn’t matter. Like if I just laugh like this. That’s okay. Or I could do a really

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Sarah Routman: You’re not ever laughing at someone we agree that we’re laughing together to support each other in laughter because we want the laughter. We want the benefits

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Sarah Routman: And the, the crux of the matter is that you don’t have to wait for something to be funny. So we think that laughter is about humor.

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Sarah Routman: But actually scientific studies indicate that there is only 20% of laughter is a result of something being funny.

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Sarah Routman: And that’s good because humor is subjective, just like happiness. So that means that we laugh when we’re nervous when we’re awkward when we feel scared when we feel nervous.

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Sarah Routman: We laugh in a social situation me laugh because it’s contagious. Like when I left a minute ago. And you both started laughing

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Sarah Routman: And so when I start a laughter session it’s purposeful playful. LAUGHTER I’ll tell some boundaries and some rules the eye contact and the suspending judgment often start with smile ups because it gets you laughing

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Sarah Routman: Especially looking at someone else and then I’ll ask everyone to introduce themselves say a name and give a left. So let’s try that right now. So my name is Sarah.

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Sarah Routman: No pressure love how you want, go ahead. Yeah, see, what’s your love or introduce yourself.

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kathygruver: Oh, I’ll do a laugh that draws my boyfriend crazy. My name is Kathy.

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Sarah Routman: Fantastic. Okay, Jason.

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Jason Mefford: All right, I’m gonna try to do this one. This is one of my friend used to do a lot. Hi, my name is Jason

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Oh this morning.

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kathygruver: I we I used to have friends that came over for game night and you knew that I was completely because when I get tired. I get silly and I get very goofy.

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kathygruver: And then I would start with the laughing and then I would we, so I’d need my inhaler. But then it would go to snorting and then it would go to the squeak where it would just the reset and you just do this.

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kathygruver: In my head, my head down.

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kathygruver: Tracy really all copies gone

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Sarah Routman: She’s like that on that.

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Sarah Routman: That’s actually kind of laughter that we’re after. We want to laugh as hard as possible. We want to laugh.

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Sarah Routman: Till our belly hurts till tears are coming down. That’s the kind of laughter. That is the healthiest and in order to get the most amount of benefits you want to try to laugh for 15 minutes at a time.

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Sarah Routman: You can read them, but you want to do 15 minutes of deep belly laughs a day that’s what

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Sarah Routman: Gets your heart going in your oxygen flowing

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kathygruver: You know and I bet I get to that.

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Sarah Routman: Because, oh

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Sarah Routman: And here’s the thing. Your body doesn’t know the difference between laughing because something’s funny. Yeah, we’ll just laughing And chances are, there might have been something that tickled. You are triggered that laughter. In the beginning, but after that.

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Sarah Routman: It didn’t trigger everyone else but your laughter triggered everyone else so you know when you know when you understand that your body doesn’t need to think it’s funny.

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Sarah Routman: That you’re not looking for happiness. You’re trying to put in joy and that you can have this incredible element of play. You said you get

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Sarah Routman: Funny and silly and goofy. That’s really the key. If you can put play in

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Sarah Routman: That is taking all your self judgment away we’re not thinking, oh, I’m an adult unstressed I have responsibilities, I shouldn’t laugh.

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Sarah Routman: You’re thinking the way a child thinks, which is, I’m curious, and it’s like how fascinating is this and they’re rolling on the floor and you say, what’s so funny. And they don’t know because it really isn’t about funny, it’s just about joy.

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Sarah Routman: And so when a when a client says, I want to be happy, maybe I might turn it around and say, when was the last time you felt joy. Tell me about that, what did that feel like, wouldn’t that be something to strive for. And guess what you are in control of that you can do that any time. Yep, absolutely.

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kathygruver: On my

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kathygruver: On my, I have a Facebook group called the empowerment project and yesterday the prompt was, what is your favorite sound and at least 60 or 70% of the people said laughter specifically child’s laughter. But people say it. Laughter an ocean.

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kathygruver: We’re kind of the too loud, too. Sounds everyone liked. Go ahead.

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Jason Mefford: Jason. Sorry, I cut you off. Well, I was gonna ask too because you know you were talking about playing and putting an element of play into this and I know, because again, I’ve been thinking about this recently.

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Jason Mefford: As, as we grow up and become adults right we get serious and and

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Jason Mefford: You know there’s there’s the pressure. There’s the stress. There’s the everything else, right, that goes along with it. And so much of the time we feel heavy or at least sometimes all feel heavy right

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Jason Mefford: And it’s and it’s not necessarily sometimes life is heavy. Right. And, but I think again it’s those are, again, those kind of times when it’s like, Hey, I just didn’t laugh.

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Jason Mefford: Right and and and play more like a child. You know, because unfortunately we grow up, we get all these preconceived notions of Ooh, I’m a prim and proper person. Now, you know, I’m an adult Tomas do this.

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Jason Mefford: And and instead, really, we need to continue to let that little kid out. Why make it fun. LAUGH regardless of what’s going on my life.

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Sarah Routman: Well, in fact, it was a very not happy moment when I learned about. Laughter So I want to take you back to the year of 1993

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Sarah Routman: And I am living on the floor of my daughter’s hospital room on a brightly colored polka dotted futon which also doubled as her playroom.

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Sarah Routman: And she had an immune deficiency and she was quite sick and we were very isolated. So, it reminds me of these times, because you know everyone had to wear a mask and gloves and gown up to come into our room.

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Sarah Routman: And so she

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Sarah Routman: Her dad was living with the other two girls out of town and he you know we were in North Carolina at Duke. Medical Center. So he would come to visit when he could. And he came

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Sarah Routman: He came one weekend and he was sitting on a rocking chair with her in his lap and her name is Jacqueline

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Sarah Routman: And there was a big brightly colored poster on the wall that said I love you very much.

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Sarah Routman: And he held her in his lap, and he said he was pointing to the poster. He said I love you. And when he said you he tickled her and she started laughing

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Sarah Routman: And the two of them started laughing and I had earlier that week met with nine major doctors like heads of the departments and I, as I said I was living on the floor of the bathroom.

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Sarah Routman: But I just started laughing and I was transported to another place. It was as if she was saying, forget all this mom come with me. Let’s go to the garden. Let’s play

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Sarah Routman: And and we did. And so we went to that magical land where kids play because they’re not here, they’re playing. They’re just exploring

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Sarah Routman: And so, I mean, I was really transformed I recognize the power of that. LAUGHTER And I had my antenna up for it for years. And it wasn’t until my older daughter later was in college and her friend.

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Sarah Routman: Had become a laughter yoga leader and invited me to come to a session I had no idea what I was in for there were 40 strangers on the basement in the basement of a church and

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Sarah Routman: We didn’t know each other. We were told to laugh on purpose, we felt silly. We felt awkward and then the laughter just exploded and it became unstoppable. And at that point, it was like

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Sarah Routman: This is what I’ve been waiting for. And I have to do this and I immediately became a laughter yoga leader and later a teacher and it is so important to me.

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Sarah Routman: Because I know the power of that laughter to change everything in your life. And again, you can change the circumstances, but I’ve even laughed with hospice patients and I teach hospice caregivers and the medical staff.

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Sarah Routman: Just because someone is terminally ill does not mean that you need to sit around and be miserable every day.

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Sarah Routman: You can find the joy of the moment. And so we often don’t go visit someone who’s sick because we don’t know what to say to them, what if you walked in somebody’s room and said, Hey, have you done your smile ups today, or have you laugh today.

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Sarah Routman: And there’s a couple gentle finger exercises that I’m going to also show you because

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Sarah Routman: These really help when you’re trying to get into laughter. We have, as adults, like you said, Jason. Lots of resistance. So if you put your spread your fingers. Why’d you have pressure points here.

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Sarah Routman: And we’re gonna, I’m going to teach you this backwards because when we’re done, we’re going to say, very good, very good. Yay, which is a very kid like thing to do. Very good, very good.

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Sarah Routman: Very good. Okay. But we’re accessing these pressure points in our hands and we also can do hope. Oh, hahaha. These are transitions.

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kathygruver: For doing that and you laughter yoga. No.

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Sarah Routman: Okay, so, but this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to separate each thumb and as we bring it back together. We’re going to say, Hmm, and then we’re going to increase another finger and another ha till we’re all done and ready

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Jason Mefford: Ha ha.

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Jason Mefford: Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

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kathygruver: Ha ha.

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Sarah Routman: Ha.

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Sarah Routman: Ha ha ha ha ha.

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Sarah Routman: Little faster now ready

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kathygruver: Jason

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Jason Mefford: I’m trying to focus on my fingers.

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Jason Mefford: Know,

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Sarah Routman: your pinky. Okay.

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Sarah Routman: One more time. Ready.

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Sarah Routman: To go backwards backwards. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: Okay.

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kathygruver: Here we go. He’s gonna watch Jason

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kathygruver: Because when we do hypnosis, we

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kathygruver: Always make Jason, do it.

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Jason Mefford: I know

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Sarah Routman: Sideways. So, we can see how well you’re doing.

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Jason Mefford: Oh boy, add extra complexity to it. Do it. Okay. Haha.

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Sarah Routman: Very good, very good. Yay.

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Jason Mefford: Good, very good. Yeah.

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kathygruver: My God, I just saw like four year old, Jason. This is

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kathygruver: Hilarious.

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kathygruver: And of course, because, you know, this happens, we are out of time. Oh, no.

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kathygruver: I know it happened so fast and the one that was one thing I was gonna say was

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kathygruver: My father had the best sense of humor. Ever. He was the funniest man he was so kind. He was so filled with joy and I remember at my Mom’s funeral. He was the one making everyone. LAUGH

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kathygruver: And you can see some of like the older people were like,

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kathygruver: How an appropriate is that he’s laughing at his wife’s funeral. Now that was freaking awesome that he was laughing and I you know I learned that from him. It’s like there’s never a time that you can’t bring that joy and so I told her.

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Sarah Routman: And the thing is, you can’t be sad if you haven’t once felt joy about something. Yeah. And so he was taking all the joy of her life and bringing it into that moment. And that’s just awesome.

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kathygruver: Well, thank you, sir, for bringing a lot of joy into our lives. This has been awesome. Why don’t you tell everybody. I’m going to just give her what Jason for a while when I

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Jason Mefford: Got my 15 minutes into they are

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kathygruver: Totally did, and we did a show before you were. We were laughing so that’s good. Um, why don’t you tell me, I know you have a new book, why don’t you tell everyone how to reach you how to get the book, all that good stuff.

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Sarah Routman: Okay, great. So if you want to reach me. The easiest way is Sarah sa RA H at last healthy two words all connected.com Sarah at left healthy calm and you could guess that the website is live healthy

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Sarah Routman: So healthy talk calm and I have a YouTube channel that is also live healthy and if you want to subscribe to that YouTube channel, I’d be overjoyed. So the full story of

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Sarah Routman: My daughter’s illness and finding laughter can be found in this book, which we just had the book launch last week.

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Sarah Routman: An Anthology of 21 authors living with chronic illness and mine is one of to caregiver chapters and this is so important.

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Sarah Routman: We had no idea when we were publishing it that it would be so timely, but these are people who you can’t see that they’re sick, but they’re sick and in pain. A lot

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Sarah Routman: And so this gives a lot of information about how to live with chronic illness and

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Sarah Routman: Every single one of these people is filled with optimism and hope, despite having multiple illnesses and the statistics about

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Sarah Routman: People living with chronic illness are staggering over half of our population in the next five years will likely not only live with a chronic illness but half of those will live with multiple conditions.

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Sarah Routman: So this

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Sarah Routman: Can be found. Also you can email me at Sarah at live healthy and I can send you information can also find this on Amazon camp.

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Sarah Routman: So,

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kathygruver: So timely and so important. Um, Jason. A final word.

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Jason Mefford: I think this is great. I mean, again, it you know for me I

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Jason Mefford: I need to laugh more, I need to experience more joy.

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Jason Mefford: You know, because I think a lot of times we

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Jason Mefford: We all kind of chase after happiness, but like we said at the beginning, it’s subjective well being and something as simple as our little tapping

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Jason Mefford: Don’t get it going. Guy on our shoulder doing the

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Jason Mefford: Finger thing. I gotta, I gotta practice.

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Jason Mefford: Is going backwards is harder for me than forward.

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Jason Mefford: But there there are little things that again we can do and need to do and build into our daily routines, you know, this is just as important

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Jason Mefford: As you know, meditation as reading, as you know, prayer. If your spirit, you know, anything like that that you that you kind of do every day. We just need to develop this habit of daily. Laughing You know, so thank you.

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kathygruver: Yeah. Thank you, Sarah, so much for being on this was such a fun episode.

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kathygruver: Yay. All right.

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kathygruver: Yay.

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kathygruver: I’m Kathy. Kathy group where I can be reached at Kathy gruber.com

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Jason Mefford: Jason Medford, I can be reached at Jason method calm. So this week. Go out and laugh more practice some of these things get Sarah’s book connect with her. Watch your on YouTube.

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Jason Mefford: But just get out there and laugh more and remember to, you know, bring that joy into your life. And with that, we will catch you all on the future episode of the fire and earth podcast. See ya.

E88: Lessons from a Chief Audit Executive with Sohail Saleem

In this week’s #jammingwithjason episode I speak with Sohail Saleem about lessons he learned from being a CAE. We discuss various topics including: investing time and money into your career development (and yes that even means out of your own pocket), having a vision, determining what you need to get to the next level, seeing the big picture, developing your soft-skills, and thinking outside of the box.

Take a listen to the episode to learn Sohail’s career path and advise on becoming a CAE.

So much wisdom from Sohail in this episode.

Sohail Saleem is the Executive Director of Internal Audit (CAE) at Mount Royal University
Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

#internalaudit #chiefauditexecutive #internalauditpodcast

Transcript

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Jason Mefford: Well, Welcome everybody to another episode of jamming with Jason. Hey, today we get to do one of my favorite kinds of episodes, which is talking to a fellow chief audit executive. So I have my friend Sohail Salim with me and he is the chief audit.

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Jason Mefford: Executive of the Mount Royal University.

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Jason Mefford: Based in Calgary Canada. So, so hey I’ll welcome. How you doing, man.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): I’m being good Jason, how about you.

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Jason Mefford: Good, good, good. Yeah. So, you know, I always like doing these episodes, because I get people that contact me all the time. How do I become a chief audit executive, it’s like well listen to some of the podcast episodes.

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Jason Mefford: So it’s, it’s kind of fun here. So maybe give people

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Jason Mefford: A little background of your career because I know you’ve moved internationally.

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Jason Mefford: Too right, so sometimes people are interested in that as well.

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Jason Mefford: You know, especially because I’m from the US. I would get a lot of people in the Middle East, particularly, hey, I want to move to the US and work. And I’m like, Okay, well it’s it’s not quite that simple.

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Jason Mefford: So, so you’ve got some of that that kind of story to share. I mean, moving to Canada, obviously, but so maybe just kind of give people a little background in your career and kind of how you moved up and some of the things that you’ve learned, you know, to get to your point. Now as chief executive.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Sure, sure. Definitely, Jason. So, you know, I started my internet career in Pakistan. So I remember it was 1999 when I started my career in into nodded and coming from

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): From a background of competing my MBA. I went into into not it, which is, you know, different because a lot of people, they start doing

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): You know, they start they finished their CPA or a C, and they go into internet Mine wasn’t a bit different.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): So I had no idea where I’m landing gears. So started my career at until not it there that was basically a health care you know organization come University, and that was in Pakistan, it’s a it’s a sort of an NGO called the icon university but had international

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Branches across, across the world. And I started my career there and I quickly realized that in order for me to move forward. I need to

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Get some additional qualifications some additional experiences and to not aid and that was a wonderful organization for me to start doing my into nodded. They’re getting my experience I finished my CIA in a year. So that was the first thing which I did so.

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Jason Mefford: Congratulations. Yeah, that that was 20 years ago now. So in the year 2000 is when I finished my CIA

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And that was fantastic, because it gave me an excellent understanding of risk and controls and things like that and and then you know I continued with with that organization and got my my see saw, which was in 2004

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): But that was the thing which which was great and I said that, hey, I, I think I lack my accounting designation, because that one is important. Right. So I started my ACC and as you know that’s something very popular.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): In in Pakistan in Middle East, and it’s a UK qualification. So finish that you know that give me some some edge in terms of, of having some of the current credentials credentials, besides my name.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And. And that was an area where I started. And as I progressed in my internal one of my dream was to become the head of internal audit that

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Was why I’m here. I am

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): With Mount Royal university of being the head of internal audit in 2006 is where I got an opportunity to migrate to Canada.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): I was still before I migrated. I was the manager internal audit at the icon University Hospital in Karachi, Pakistan.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And I moved here took a senior auditor role, you know, because as you know that yeah in order when you move, you have to, you know, sacrifice some things so I moved down one level.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And quickly moved back to manager into nodded and stayed there for for for quite some time changed my jobs.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And and got my CPA and other designations. And one of the key things which was important for me as a progress is really to

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): To understand in terms of where I am and where I want to go. A WAR. HOW IN head off into nodded. You know, work in the organization. So I

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Tried to connect with lot of people across different industries. Some of those were my mentors who were able to provide me some some advice from that perspective.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Really understanding the trends of into nodded, where it was where it’s going.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Being on top of a magazine conferences connections. I think that was so critical for me. Yeah. And again, understanding the business. It’s also very important, because if you wanted to progress.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): You need to understand the business, you have to be flexible. You have to be strategic in from that perspective. So all of those things were critical for me as I climbed my career. From that perspective.

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Jason Mefford: Okay, well, so we got to unpack some of that because

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Jason Mefford: You just went a lot of places, right. So, so I just wanted to highlight and maybe kind of go back and touch on a couple of these things, again, right, because

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Jason Mefford: You know, again, people are listening to this and sometimes they kind of skip over it. But, you know, one of the reasons I love doing these episodes. Is it is it shows people kind of the path to take, right and and a lot of people, you know, I was told, a long time ago.

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Jason Mefford: You know, if you want to be successful if you want to get to a certain place, look at what people are doing that are at that place, right. So how did they get there. What made them successful, how did they get there.

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Jason Mefford: And so, you know, it’s interesting. So if we back up. You know, you said you didn’t go kind of the traditional route because a lot of people do.

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Jason Mefford: Often start in public accounting and then kind of move over right but you went right from your MBA into an internal audit role. So, you know, they don’t teach you any of that stuff MBA school. At least they didn’t mind. Right.

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Jason Mefford: So you realized, Okay, just a minute. Now, if I’m going to be an auditor and if I’m gonna do this as my career MBA is great.

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Jason Mefford: But I probably need some other things. Right, right. So you got your CIA you got your CC, you got your A CCA and then I think probably once you got to Canada, you did your CPA.

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Jason Mefford: So, you know, I always talk about kind of three big certifications and it’s usually a CIA see says CPA usually one of those everybody should have

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Jason Mefford: You don’t necessarily need to have all three.

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You do.

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Jason Mefford: But if you’re if you’re serious about a career and internal audit you need to consider getting at least one of those. And then maybe some other things, depending on what you’re doing right so

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Jason Mefford: And I’m guessing to so so I’m going to kind of ask a blind question here because I didn’t ask you this before but you know you went through, you got you got four different certifications. Right.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And I had a few more but ok ok so this. So these so you got more to right okay

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Jason Mefford: So a lot of times people

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Jason Mefford: You know they want their company to pay for it. And it’s great companies should pay for it. But let me ask you, did your company pay for all of these

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): So I would say for a CIA and CC yes for my ACC. I have to pay for my own pocket, and that was investment and same one for the for the CPA as well. So, so it’s, I would say, with a combination of both.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah. So, and that’s usually what I’ve seen, too, is it’s a combination. Sometimes the company will pay. Sometimes they won’t, but successful people that move into roles like chief audit executive they’re willing to invest in themselves.

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Jason Mefford: In time and money. Right. Sometimes it means you have to pull money out of your pocket to to invest in yourself, but I’m guessing you kind of got that back in your salary. Didn’t you

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Definitely it eventually pays JASON Right. I think if you look at from that perspective that it’s your investment and you’re investing yourself. That’s very important. So

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Yeah, your designations your training. All those things are so important for you, for you to move up from that perspective. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: Well, and because, you know, again, it’s one of the partners that I worked for a long time ago. He told me if you’re not willing to invest in yourself and why should I

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Jason Mefford: Right. And it’s like, oh,

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Jason Mefford: You know that kind of that kind of hits you back a little bit, but it’s like well you know what he’s actually right.

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Jason Mefford: And it’s kind of funny. There’s another book it’s it’s off topic a little bit, but it’s called the millionaire mindset, right.

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Jason Mefford: And in that book, you know, he’s talking about, you know, like we were talking about before. If you want to be successful. You want to be a chief audit executive look at what they’re doing. Right.

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Jason Mefford: If you want to be a millionaire. Look at what do millionaires do and it surprised me. One of the things that was in that book is those people invest about 10% of their annual income in their own personal development. Hmm.

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Jason Mefford: Interesting out of

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Jason Mefford: This. So, again, you know, we can see many people go back and listen to previous episodes on lessons. If it’s from a chief executive.

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Jason Mefford: You’re going to hear the same thing, folks. Yeah, don’t actually invest in yourself. But like you said it eventually ends up paying off okay right so

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Jason Mefford: The other thing that you brought out because, you know, like I said you you migrated to Canada, and I know I get a lot of people that asked me.

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Jason Mefford: About this right. And so I think it was important, what you brought up you know in in Pakistan. You were a manager.

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Jason Mefford: But in order to move to the other countries. Sometimes you have to take a step backwards in your career to be able to move forward. Right. So you went from a manager down to senior to be able to do that.

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Jason Mefford: In the other thing you know maybe just to

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Jason Mefford: Not to belabor it, but since so many people have asked me to write because I get asked about the US. I don’t know what it’s like in Canada, but I’m guessing there to

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Jason Mefford: You know you probably had to go there first. Right. And then actually get the job once you had gotten there as well.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Yes. So mostly that that that is but you know I was lucky ones where you know I I already had a job, you know, I applied for few positions and

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And from Pakistan, I was able to get a job in Canada. It was an Edmonton in a healthcare organization they were looking for somebody who had a

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): You know, had internet experience in a healthcare organization and that match my profile. So, so I was one where I got a job. So I landed there with a job, but I know a lot of immigrants.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): They once they come in, they have to die, you know, applying for jobs which sometimes would take some time for them to do it, but it’s not impossible, you have to

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): You know, connect with people understand the environment. And as you said, sometimes you have to go one level down from that perspective, but having some of the designations, and the experiences. What is critical for you to take you to the next level of that standpoint.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, because you were able to move across industry, effectively, right. So you went from health care in Pakistan to healthcare in Canada so that helped you out. Yeah. Excuse me. But again, like you said, those credentials ended up helping

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Right.

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Jason Mefford: And and I’m sure that the, you know, having been a hiring manager myself if I can hire somebody who’s qualified as a manager, but as at the senior level. Yeah, that’s pretty good deal too.

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Jason Mefford: So, okay, well great light. And like I said, because a lot of people end up asking me about that. And I know that I have, you know, there’s a lot of people listening around the world in different places. So, some of them may be wanting to do that too. Now,

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Jason Mefford: I also thought it was interesting. A couple other things you said there, right, is that you had to know where I am and where I want to go.

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Jason Mefford: And I think that’s such an important thing for people to know right so maybe let’s dig into that a little bit. I mean,

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Jason Mefford: You said you know at some point in your career, you decided you wanted to be the head of audit. Right. Right. Okay. And I’m guessing you weren’t the head of audit at the time. So you knew where you were. And then when you decide where you want to be, I guess, how do you kind of go about

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Jason Mefford: You know your gap analysis on that figure out what it is that you need to do to help you get to that point. So maybe help help people kind of walk through that process. Well, the things you knew you needed to do if someday you wanted to be the head about it.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Right. I think the first pieces as we study have to have a vision right in terms of where you want to be. So that was something important. For me, as I said, was

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): You know my vision was to be head of internet in an organization do to start with and

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And obviously really see myself, I would say, okay, at least I have two levels before I become the head of internet and from that perspective so

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): What would be the next level, you know in terms in terms of that, what would I need to be successful. From that perspective. So I think that is important and and the first thing I scan and say okay

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): If you wanted to become a head of internal audit. What, what credentials, you need from our perspectives and as you highlighted, you know, some of those credentials.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): I was able to to get to it so that that makes my life easy. From that perspective. So that was the first thing

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): The second thing for me is to to be more strategic from that perspective, see the big picture. I think that is very, very important. If you

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Just focusing on your day to day internal stuff doing transaction ordering just doing your work and then going home, come back to the same a day.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): I’ve seen people who spent 10 1520 years doing the same thing and and they’re on the same position from that perspective. So you have to be strategic. From that perspective.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): See, you know what what qualifications, what

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Characteristics a chief interlocutor should have from that perspective, we know soft skills is so critical. From that perspective.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Yeah, as a chief or an executive, you have to, you know, report to the Board, you have to connect with senior management.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): So your soft skills is so important how you interact with people, how you help them from that perspective. So those are things which you observe even you in a job or you see your chief executive speaking

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): You know with in front of other senior management. We are going as part of our lesson opening meeting or it’s an exit meeting.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Or doing some presentation you observe and you learn so much from that perspective. And that was something very powerful for me.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Was to understand. Listening is so important and observing seeing them how they interact with people that is very, very important.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): In my mind from that perspective. So that was something which I, I, you know, try to learn every day from that perspective.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And and how you could be innovative. I think that is very important because my thought every day was to think outside of the box. I think that is so important.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Because if you just come on, on, do what you have been doing, you would not end up doing because if you put things, you know, if you put the same ingredients, the output would be exactly the same. You have to try it.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): In this definitely that is so important. And the way you do it.

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Jason Mefford: Is

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): In my mind is a see what’s the trends out there you know we are fortunate where we are in an environment where information is so powerful and

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And those information you could easily access across the globe. Right. So connecting with your peers connecting with your other you know people occur.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Within the industry or outside of the industry reading about into lauded what people are trying and use your mind to create do things from that perspective and try things differently would give you an edge and would show that how you are interesting and adding value from that perspective.

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Jason Mefford: Mm hmm. Well, I think it’s you know it’s interesting what you said there because the

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Jason Mefford: As auditors. Okay. And most of the personalities of people that are drawn to auditing is we’re kind of square right we like to. We like to work inside the rules.

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Jason Mefford: Were we’re rule followers. We like to kind of, you know, there’s those terms in the definition of internal auditing systematic and discipline.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, our nature. Right. And so you get so many people that just want to do things in the same way all the time, right. Like, look at the standards, the standard says I have to do it this way I do it this way or

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Jason Mefford: My internal policy, say I do it this way. So I have to do it this way. Right.

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Jason Mefford: And now here you come along and you’re saying, well, we need to be a little innovative, we need to look at things outside of our profession as well.

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Jason Mefford: And, you know, try to do things a little different. Now I know for a lot of people listening. When we say try things a little differently. They’re going to be like, are you kidding me why.

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Jason Mefford: So, so maybe you know let’s let’s talk about that a little bit. I mean what, what were some of those things. Maybe that

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Jason Mefford: That you tried a little differently or that you were able to learn, you know, maybe outside of your company outside of audit that you bring into audit that helped you to be more more innovative that way.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Right, so, you know, I would say that, you know, the first thing is that in order to do things differently.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): You know it’s trying new things, but also taking on more responsibilities, right. So, so if you are a senior auditor or you’re a manager and and and the first thing is that you have to fulfill your duties and responsibilities, but the other pieces that you have to show interest to your

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Manager or your leader that you want to take next steps right and you want to learn and you want to add value. So you could

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Come and have a discussion with yours are you with your supervisor and say hey you know I’m doing all those things, but I would like to contribute more. I want to take on more responsibilities and

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And I know most of them if they see that you are doing great things already and you are showing interest you, they would give you some of the things which they used to do and they would delegate to you.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): That’s a perfect opportunity for you to do something where you are actually trying to do things, which is one level above that and if you do those things, a year, two years,

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): You were actually at that level already because you already understand that was one of the technique I would use that I would go to my support and say, hey, can you, can I help you on this. Can I help you on this.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): This means that you have to put extra time extra effort into that, that’s fine, because I want to go up from that perspective. So when I said do things differently. It also means taking on more responsibility from that perspective.

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Jason Mefford: Well, and that’s that’s a good thing for people to remember right now because, you know, again, let’s say that you’re a senior and you want to become a manager. Right. So again, if you go to your manager, if you

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Jason Mefford: This was another thing I kind of learned right if you make your boss’s job easier by doing more of their work.

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Jason Mefford: Right, right. Then, what you’re doing is you’re you’re making life easy for your boss.

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Jason Mefford: It’s allowing them to move up in the organization. Right. And it’s allowing you to move up as well. Because if you’re a senior

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Jason Mefford: But you’re taking on some of these additional responsibilities. So you’re already somewhat acting like a manage her even though you’re still a senior

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Jason Mefford: Well, gee, when when a manager position comes open right it’s gonna be a lot easier for them to say, hey, so Hales already really kind of like a manager already. He’s already doing all these things. Why don’t we just promote him right

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Very important. I think you nailed it. Jason, you know, organizations they look for people who are actually already. So if you already are doing

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Some of those work, you would be the first person to to be contacted say hey you know you. This is a job from that perspective, do you want to do for

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): You may have spent some time into your organization and you know that you may not be able to to move up for, for some reason, either, you know, the depositions have not been open

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): That gives you an opportunity to look somewhere else and and see if you find something and you can actually tell in your interview that hey I’m been doing those things from that perspective.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): So it’s very important. For example, when I was working before in my

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Job, I was the manager into nodded, but I used to help my chief or executive in preparing the audit committee packages.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And I offered if I could go in and present or my my intellect package to the origin risk committee I was given that opportunity because I was interested

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And I demonstrate that I would be conferred. This means I used to do rehearsals and things like that with my team or an executive

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): So unless you want speak, you won’t get that opportunity. So I think that’s very important, as you said that you demonstrate your interest and things would work. And you have to be positive from that.

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Jason Mefford: Well, and it kind of goes back another word that as you were talking popped into my head is initiative. Yeah, right, that you have to, you have to have interest.

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Jason Mefford: But you also have to take initiative, right. So, so again you know like

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Jason Mefford: Earlier on, you kind of said about the people that just kind of, you know, they come in, they do the job they go home. They come in, they do the job they come home, they kind of stay stuck in the details.

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Jason Mefford: And 10 or 15 years later, they’re still doing the same job right even if they might be interested in getting promoted if they’re not taking some initiative.

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Jason Mefford: And others in the organization. See that they’re taking initiative, they’re probably going to be stuck, where they are. Right. And so, you know, like you said, having the initiative to go back to the chief audit executive and say hey you know what I want to help.

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Jason Mefford: With with the board packet. I’d like to come to the meetings, I’d like to see what’s going on. I’d like to, you know, maybe present part of part of the meeting. Right.

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Jason Mefford: That shows the person above you, in the organization that you have that initiative, you’re interested, but you’re also willing to do it right and I know sometimes that means you might be. You might have to work a little bit more as well height but

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): You know,

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Jason Mefford: To two things that I that I learned when I was very young, when I was still a teenager. My mother told me one time, she said.

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Jason Mefford: If you want to if you want to get ahead of everybody else in your office and she did this right she she was always at work 15 minutes before she had to be there.

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Jason Mefford: And she always stayed at least 15 minutes after she could leave. Right. And she moved up from being a secretary to being the office manager admin person in her office right

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Jason Mefford: Because she was willing to show up, take the initiative be there. A little bit longer than everybody else was

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Jason Mefford: In that showed and helped her move up right another another family friend that we had. He was, he actually sold insurance. He was an insurance salesman.

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Jason Mefford: And he told me one time, he said, you know what the differences between a person that sells insurance. It only works 40 hours a week.

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Jason Mefford: And somebody who who works 50 hours a week and I’m like, What do you mean

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Jason Mefford: I’m a teenager, trying to wonder what he’s doing. He’s like the people that show up and only put in 40 hours a week.

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Jason Mefford: Right. They don’t earn very much money, the people that are willing to put in that extra little bit they earned 50 to 100% more

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Jason Mefford: Than the insurance agents that only showed up for 40 hours a week, right. And so it’s it’s the same thing. If you take that if you have that vision and you take that long term approach right

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Jason Mefford: It might mean again, whether it’s certifications. Okay, you’re going to spend some more time studying and taking the exams and other people are

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Jason Mefford: If you’re showing up early. If you’re asking for more responsibility, you’re probably going to spend a little bit more time at work than some of the other people are

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Jason Mefford: But long term for your career that that return is going to be huge right and and it always got me when, like I said, when that family, friends, said the difference between 40 and 50 hours. And I’m like,

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Jason Mefford: 10 hours, isn’t that much difference for a lot more money, right, or a lot more responsibility, whatever it comes to kind of at that point. So,

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Right.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And and Jason, it’s, it’s how you think right if if you’re thinking that, hey, I’ve been paid for this 40 hours, for example, and that’s what I would do.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): That’s what you would fulfill in terms of your role and your duties, but but that may not help you in in in meeting your goals and objectives and your vision from that perspective. So I think

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Putting in extra is is very important. However, I also want to highlight here that you also have to work smart. That is very important because

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): I’ve seen people. And I know that our job requires to be detail oriented, and that is, no, you know, no doubt from that perspective. However, you have to see we are providing reasonable assurance. We’re not providing absolute assurance.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And I’ve seen in my career, I’ve seen auditors.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): who spend hundreds and hundreds of hours in doing what they do. You could finish a project in 400 hours, you can finish a project in three or 5000 hours right

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): So you have to see what is reasonable, you have to sit back, understand the big picture. What are you trying to achieve here from that perspective.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And how you’d be able to do a certain time.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): A certain project in a given time with with the best and providing reasonable assurance from that perspective. So working smartly is very important.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Because if you don’t work smart, you end up exhausting all your hours on one or two projects and you won’t even time to think about different things, right, so that is very important to ask smart, think about things outside of the box and put extra effort as required.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah. Well, and that’s that’s a good reminder to because

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Jason Mefford: As you were saying that I was thinking, oh gosh, I hope people don’t think we’re saying just work just work more and then you’ll get promoted, right, because that’s, that’s a good point. It’s like

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Jason Mefford: It’s not about working harder or working longer hours, necessarily, it’s about working smarter. Yeah.

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Jason Mefford: Right, because I know you know people that work for me. Hey, if, if I’ve got somebody who can do the same job, let’s say in six hours that it takes everybody else normally eight hours to do

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Jason Mefford: Then you know i know that i can give that person more responsibility, they’re more efficient in their time. And so, that person is probably going to be the one that will get more responsibility will get promoted. So it’s not just the number of hours, but it’s actually working smarter.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): As. Right, exactly. And one more thing. Jason is that

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): There are do shortcuts. Right, we can. You can be the head of internal audit or you move to a senior to a manager overnight. You have to work for it. Right.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): So if you’re not if you’re not getting promoted or you’re not moving up the ladder.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): You know, six months or a year. Don’t give up. I would say, right, work hard, continue to put effort because if you have that vision, you would eventually get there. I’d be have to be positive. That is very, very important.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): In my mind and and and and you will get that it might be later, it might not be sooner but you know if you’re on the right track. You’re working hard. You are smarter.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): You’re getting more experience you are understanding the trends and internal audit you are connecting with people all those things are important for you to move on in your in your in your career.

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Jason Mefford: Well, and

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Jason Mefford: Kind of one of the other areas that you touched on before to that. I think it’s so important.

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Jason Mefford: Is around understanding the business.

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Jason Mefford: And, you know, again, because I you know that plus the soft skills side of it because I’ve, I’ve trained people for decades now, right, and it’s

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Jason Mefford: And it’s, it always is funny to me how especially in our profession. We all want the technical training right who. Show me, show me how to how to, you know, prevent and detect fraud, because that’s cool. Right.

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Jason Mefford: And so people spend all of their time on on some of these technical areas and how to be a better auditor.

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Jason Mefford: Technically, but then usually just kind of ignore or forget the whole part of understanding the business and the soft skills you know that you brought up. So there’s another trend everybody who’s listening.

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Jason Mefford: You know, invest in yourself, soft skills, everybody that I’ve talked to on here has been saying these things right is

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Jason Mefford: That we that we do need to focus on those areas as well. Right. Because to me, that’s what really sets apart the people you know to get to the manager or director level, you really have to start developing and knowing those things right.

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Jason Mefford: Right and and understand the business because I remember that, too. When I was way, way, way, way back when I worked at Arthur Andersen. Okay.

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Jason Mefford: We had one of the phases in our audit was called understand the business. Yeah. And I remember, you know, so I’ve been talking about this for 2530 years

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Jason Mefford: But it’s it’s it always kind of was funny to me that people say well i i understand our business right so like I might look at you and say, Well, I work at a university, I understand that. I work at a university. It’s like, I don’t think that’s what understand the business means right

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Jason Mefford: It doesn’t mean I know I worked for a university. It’s like, what are the leavers that drive a university, right, what’s the business behind a university. What are those, you know, strategic level things that you have to be concerned with young running an organization, you know, like a university.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Yeah, exactly. And I think if you’re in a company, you don’t know your company’s mission. You don’t know the strategic plan that business plan.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And you don’t know their values, I think you won’t be able to achieve much, I would say, because everything you do has to have that linkage

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): To the, to the organization’s strategic goals and objectives. So it’s very important first for you to understand your organization from a, from a holistic standpoint.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And and then you have to also understand, you know, some of the key corporate policies and procedures and the goals and objectives. Those are very, very important.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And and also not only, you know, for example, if I’m with the post secondary institutions, it’s very important for me to know what’s happening in other post secondary institutions.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): For example, in this corporate environment what they are doing. Right. It’s important for if I need to add value. I need to know what my other you know peers are doing from that perspective. So it’s very important for you to

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): To understand that, and you’d be able to know more about by connecting with people across, across those you know organizations.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): going and doing more research from that perspective. So everything is, is, you know, sort of, you have to come behind together to to ensure that you are the right level to add value and you understand your business.

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Jason Mefford: Very, very, very true. Oh my goodness. This has been. This has been great. Now usually, I like to kind of ask one more question, too, because I think

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Jason Mefford: You know you and I have lived through lots of stuff right and and it’s it’s

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Jason Mefford: I always kind of like to ask people at the end here because you know we’re talking about career and development, you know, and what kind of advice would you give

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Jason Mefford: Either to your younger self or maybe to someone else who is in that younger party in their career. Right. So. So think back maybe when you were a senior auditor.

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Jason Mefford: Right and knowing. Now what you know what kind of advice would you give to your younger self or to maybe somebody else who’s a senior or something like that out there.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Right. I think my advice to them would be a, you know, don’t give up. I think that is important, right, if you try to come up with a vision of where do you want to see yourself in the next five or 10 years

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): And then identify those things which would help you move to that level. I mean, you could go, you may want to connect with other

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): People who have been at that level to get advice from them. But at the end of the day, you have to

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Document your own plan that is very important. From that perspective and and and and you have so many things available. There are so many tools available for you that would help you

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): To do, be able to meet your mandate, so be positive, not only work hard, but work smarter. That is very important have excellent listening skills and be a good observer, because those are free. You don’t have to pay sometimes

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Follow these things.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Right. But if you are a good observer, you see things you observe things and you learn each and every day and invest in yourself as you highlighted earlier, that is so important.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): It’s not an expense. It’s an investment on you and and that would pay off you in the longer runs don’t think on a short term basis. Think about 510 or 15 years from that perspective and you would get there.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah. Well, I appreciate that you said that too because, you know, again, sometimes I feel like I’m the only one saying this, and people

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Jason Mefford: But it’s like, you know, folks, if you’re not willing to spend $100 $500 $1,000 on your personal investment in in growing you know yourself and you know a lot of people can’t help you if you’re not willing to do that for yourself.

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Jason Mefford: You know, but again, like like you’ve seen in your career, I’ve seen in my career, you know you you invest that you know 2000 $3,000 maybe in a new certification.

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Jason Mefford: And then you get a new job that’s paying you maybe 10 or $15,000 a year more

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Jason Mefford: You know, you’re going to earn that 10 or $15,000 a year for the rest of your career. Right, right. So, investing that let’s say $3,000 may end up giving you $300,000

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Jason Mefford: Over the life of your career and you know yeah we got to remember that. And then I love to what you said about don’t give up.

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Jason Mefford: Yeah, I remember it. I can’t remember if this is a true story, or if it’s more like a metaphor, but the story kind of goes that this, this person had a plot of land. Right. And so, and they were digging for gold or diamonds or something like that. They were mining

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Jason Mefford: And they were digging and digging and digging on, go on, you know, for for a while.

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Jason Mefford: And then finally, they’re like, you know, forget this. There’s nothing here. I’m going to travel the world and go find some other place right to dig for my gold or diamonds

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Jason Mefford: And literally, this person was three feet away from this huge gold vein, but they laughed because they gave up before they got there.

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Jason Mefford: And so that that’s the kind of the story is, it’s three feet from gold is the ideas don’t give up just before you’re ready to hit the gold mine, if you will. Right, and I think I see a lot of people that that do that in their career as well and it’s it’s sad to see

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Jason Mefford: So don’t give up. If you’ve got that vision, just keep working it and figure out, you know how to get there.

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Jason Mefford: It might mean that you have to move countries that might mean you have to take a step backwards in your career to then be able to move forward.

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Jason Mefford: It might mean that you have to move to another organization. But, you know, again, keep that vision in your mind. Keep doing what it takes to get to the next level. And you too can be like Sohail

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Jason Mefford: And someday be a chief audit executive if that’s your goal, right.

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Jason Mefford: And again, it’s not for everybody, but the whole purpose is. You been successful in your career, people can learn from that. Then again, like you said, they just have to decide, you know, where am I now and where do I want to go and start coming up with a plan for themselves. So

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Jason Mefford: I hope you had fun so hell. I did.

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Jason Mefford: No thank you.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Thank you, Jason, for the opportunity to have this podcast. That was excellent. And if I could be any help, you know, we the people can connect with me on LinkedIn and more than happy to, to help them and provide them more more thoughts and insight and advice.

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Jason Mefford: Well, thanks. I really appreciate. I appreciate you sharing because that’s really kind of the whole idea behind the podcast is

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Jason Mefford: get information out there help people improve their lives invest in themselves so they can have the life that they have in their vision and their dreams. So thanks again for coming on. So hell.

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SOHAIL SALEEM (Mount Royal University): Right. Excellent. Thank you.

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Thanks.

Fire & Earth Podcast E85: 5 Steps to Unlocking Potential Through P.U.R.P.O.S.E. with Connie Benjamin

Purpose fuels everything we do. When we live our #purpose we get lit up and on fire! In this #fireandearthpodcast episode we are joined by Connie Benjamin, an international speaker and author of the book: Women With Fire™: 6 Secrets to Purpose, Prosperity, and Passion.

Get out your paper and pen and take some notes, since we talk through some acronyms that will give you the steps to unlock your potential, tap into inspirations, and find your right next step to take action. We also discuss why FIRE #goals are much more effective than SMART goals. Yep, that’s another acronym you’re going to want to learn and apply in your life.

Listen in at: http://www.jasonmefford.com/fireandearthpodcast/

Connie is also the podcast host for My Fire Within Radio. After sharing her message from the stage with thousands of people, she realized women entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs who want to make a difference in the world through their work without losing their family, or their sanity needed a book to guide them in how to do it.

Connie discovered it was possible to have it all, at the right time, and in the right order after she learned about Higher Laws principles. Now, she dedicates her time to sharing her knowledge with female self-starters to help them improve their lives. These principles helped Connie restore her marriage from feeling disconnected to being better than the day she and her husband Andy were married! These principles also helped her replace her day job income as she found renewed love in being a stay-at-home mom with her three daughters, and recovered her health.

Learn more at: https://www.myfirewithin.com/

To get access to the FREE purpose discovery session Connie mentioned during the episode visit: https://www.myfirewithin.com/purpose

Transcript

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Jason Mefford: Welcome to another episode of the fire and earth podcast, I’m your co host Jason Medford

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Kathy Gruver: And I am Kathy gruver and we are so thrilled to be back. And also, so thrilled to have an amazing guest. Why is that funny.

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Jason Mefford: We had a little pause there. So people that are listening, you’re gonna think oh my gosh, it is something wrong with my phone.

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Jason Mefford: No, everything’s fine, we’re still here.

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Kathy Gruver: Throw in moments of silence, just to mess with and maybe noises. No. So we’re thrilled to have

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Kathy Gruver: A very dear friend of mine. Connie Benjamin. She has an amazing show. She just did an incredible women’s event. Connie Benjamin’s going to talk about unleashing your potential through purpose, which we’re really excited about. So hey, Connie. Thanks for coming on the show.

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Connie Benjamin: Thank you so much. Kathy and Jason. You guys are so fun. I love this podcast and I’m so grateful to be here.

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Kathy Gruver: Oh, yay. Thanks. Once you tell everybody a little bit about how you got started your background and how you got to where you are right now.

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Connie Benjamin: That sounds great. I’m going to tell you a crazy story. I love crazy stories. So here we go.

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Connie Benjamin: I was I was it started really when I was in the midst of shattered glass, so I’m going to tell you how I got there.

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Jason Mefford: I was just literally shattered.

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Connie Benjamin: Glass literally

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Connie Benjamin: Literally Jason in the midst of shattered glass.

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Connie Benjamin: SO CRAZY STORY. So I, I had a job. I loved helping people. I loved what he did.

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Connie Benjamin: But I wanted to be home with my little girl that’s where my heart was that. And at the time, we actually lived in an area of town that was really unsafe.

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Connie Benjamin: And so I knew we had to move, but I think we didn’t have enough money and I had no idea what I was going to do to make more money.

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Connie Benjamin: So finally, I decided, okay, I’m going to start a business, but I knew nothing about business. And so I started going to events.

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Connie Benjamin: Finally, I got some success and we had enough money to move. And I remember walking to a new house, and our little girl went like skipping across the kitchen and out into the backyard with these big trees.

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Connie Benjamin: And I felt like I did it. I won. But what I didn’t realize is, I was actually about to lose everything that mattered most to me because, although I had focused so much on building my business.

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Connie Benjamin: I was totally out of alignment with my relationships. I wasn’t living my purpose. I was feeling empty inside and feeling stressed out.

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Connie Benjamin: And so everything came to a head. One day when I was in my office I was late for an interview. I had a million things on my to do list like stress was just all over my face.

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Connie Benjamin: If you ever been so stressed out. You can’t even think clearly, that is how I felt.

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Connie Benjamin: And so I was there in a moment of complete desperation overwhelm actually picked up a glass and threw it at the wall.

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Connie Benjamin: And I remember looking down around me and seeing pieces of shattered glass. And in that moment I realized I had to change. I had to find a way to

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Connie Benjamin: Live my purpose through my work and be connected with myself and my family. And so that’s what I’ve spent the last decade, doing is finding the principles.

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Connie Benjamin: That would help me to do that. And so now that’s that’s what I do is support entrepreneurs with overcoming self doubt overcoming overwhelmed, so they can step into their potential through their purpose.

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Jason Mefford: And I think that you know the story that you just shared is so relevant for so many people

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Jason Mefford: You know, it’s like it’s like we we work really hard. I mean, you had a goal you know you wanted to get out of the neighborhood that you were in

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Jason Mefford: You know you started getting some success, but it just didn’t feel right, you know, and it’s like

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Jason Mefford: I think every I felt that I’m guessing Kathy you felt that at some point in your life as well too. Right. I mean that that this is a common thing.

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Jason Mefford: You know, you talk to people, they’re like, Yeah, you know, I, I hate my job. I hate what I do. I don’t feel like I’m whatever right that there’s so many people in life that are out of alignment. So this is fabulous.

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Connie Benjamin: Well, and I’m just

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Kathy Gruver: I love what that metaphor is because you broke this old system broke this old paradigm

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Kathy Gruver: And then we’ll talk about, you know, picking up the pieces kind of thing. I mean, you were surrounded by that old paradigm and you had an ability to

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Kathy Gruver: Take that and create from what you wanted to. So that’s, I love that metaphor. And I love that experience that you went through. So yeah. Cool. So you talked about your five steps to

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Kathy Gruver: finding your purpose and living through purpose. So why don’t you launch in and tell us some of those and we’ll, we’ll play with that. That sounds amazing.

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Connie Benjamin: Okay. Sounds good. This is one of my favorite things to talk about. And by the way, thank you for that. I agree. I think that this this conversation, especially right now.

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Connie Benjamin: With what’s happening in the world right now people are stopping and reflecting and saying, wait a minute. Am I where I wanted to be we’re facing a lot of

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Connie Benjamin: Questions around, who do I want to be who, how do I want to show up. What is my purpose. So I’m so grateful for this conversation.

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Connie Benjamin: The five keys to unlocking your potential through purpose is one of my favorite things to talk about. Because I think that every single person in this entire world has a purpose.

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Connie Benjamin: And before I dive into these keys. I want to share a quick story because I love stories and this is how this crazy mess came to be.

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Connie Benjamin: So I after that moment in the shattered glass and Kathy. I love how you talk about that. It really was a metaphor, what was happening for me. I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t

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Connie Benjamin: Go back to what I was before. And so here it was committed. Okay, I’m going to do what I need to do. I’m going to live my purpose. I’m going to be connected to the people I love. I’m going to find myself again.

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Connie Benjamin: And it felt kind of lost. Honestly, I was like purposes, such a big thing. I don’t know where to start.

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Connie Benjamin: And I remember it was about five years ago that I got inspiration to write my book. My book is women with fire and

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Connie Benjamin: I’m so grateful hit number one international bestseller in a day, but at the time when i when i was got the inspiration to write the book.

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Connie Benjamin: I was thinking, I’m not an author, who’s going to read my book, like I wasn’t even a blogger at the time I

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Connie Benjamin: Did not have this you know desire burning in my soul to write a book, but I had inspiration and a purpose to write the book. And so then it was this journey, figuring out how do I do that.

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Connie Benjamin: How do I step into that when I don’t feel up to the task when I’m dealing with my own crazy making subconscious beliefs.

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Connie Benjamin: When I’m dealing with just the chaos of my life and just see, you know, at the moment that I got that inspiration. I had a baby and a toddler and a preteen like my life was a mess. In fact, there

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Kathy Gruver: Was

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Connie Benjamin: Tons of free time. Yes, totally I you know what’s so funny is sometimes when I think about what I believe an author to be and I think about, you know,

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Connie Benjamin: Looking over the lake with this big, huge deck and

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Connie Benjamin: pondering the thoughts that will come into our minds and with the hot cocoa beside us and the soft music and the ways like this was not my life I was literally writing my books.

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Connie Benjamin: At times in my closet, because that was the only quiet place in my house with my laptop on top of my laundry basket, which was unfolded. Of course it was.

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Connie Benjamin: So my life was just crazy. And so, to try and figure this out of how do we step into our purpose when our life feels crazy

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Connie Benjamin: When we don’t feel up to the task when we don’t feel enough and when crazy stuff happens because when we’re on a path of purpose crazy stuff happens. So let’s. Does that make sense. That’s my crazy story.

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Jason Mefford: No, it was well. Well, it is. And actually, because as you were talking, it reminded me on my walk this morning I was listening to another podcast.

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Jason Mefford: And he mentioned Paul McCartney and it was an interview and one that I actually, I had remembered so when he was talking about. It was like, I could see the interview again because I’d seen it right

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Jason Mefford: And and and and those thoughts that you had about, you know, I want to write a book, but who am I right that we all have these feelings of doubt of self.

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Jason Mefford: You know, lack of self worth. Who am I, kind of a thing. And I remember because because it brought up again in that in that

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Jason Mefford: Interview with Paul McCartney, at the end, you know, they asked him a question. So, you know, what is it that you’re

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Jason Mefford: You know, afraid ever kind of conservative and he’s like you know that people won’t like me.

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Jason Mefford: It’s like, holy shit you’re Paul sir Hall fucking McCartney right beetle an icon and even at that level. We’re all human we all still have some of those things. But like you said, all you really need is the inspiration and crazy things happen. Yeah, we’re all good enough.

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Kathy Gruver: Well, and is that imposter syndrome. I mean, because it’s been drilled into our head that we have to have certain this or certain that

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Kathy Gruver: To write a book to be successful to be like to be a speaker to be whatever it is, we’ve all struggled with that and I’ve talked to so many women in tech specifically who have issues with

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Kathy Gruver: This imposter syndrome thing and feeling like they’re not enough, they could be, you know, one of the top engineers at Apple, and they still feel like they’re not enough so

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Kathy Gruver: I think we’ve all had moments of that we all share that experience. So I’m excited that we’re talking about this. So, so let’s. What’s the first step. I’m dying to know. I want to know.

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Connie Benjamin: Okay, okay. I love it. And thank you so much for that. I love that conversation that yeah we all feel this. So, this is so important.

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Connie Benjamin: So the first step. It’s an acronym. I believe strongly in acronyms, because this is how I remember

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Connie Benjamin: And so the first step is priorities. So purpose is the acronym, and the P stands for priorities, how can we have our priorities in order in such

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Connie Benjamin: A way that we can receive inspiration. We can take care of ourselves and we can connect to the people that we love and what matters most. So making sure those are in place.

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Connie Benjamin: And the u stands for unconscious beliefs, the awareness that I mean we know this Kathy. I loved your book so much. That’s why I referenced it so much in my book was because

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Connie Benjamin: I love that you were one of the biggest lights in my sky that helped me to understand how much unconscious beliefs are going on.

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Connie Benjamin: I mean, we know that they make up 94 95% of of what what we believe in who we are. So we need to be aware of those. So that’s the you

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Connie Benjamin: Know The R stands for right next step. And so often what happens is when we go on this purpose driven path we feel like

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Connie Benjamin: I just have to have it all figured out. And we don’t we just need to take the right next step. And I actually use fire goals to help me to get clarity on that.

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Connie Benjamin: The P stands for power above connecting with that divine inspiration, whatever way that means for people. So for some people. People talk about, you know, doing meditation doing yoga. Yoga to be being like Yoda and connecting with the divine right

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Connie Benjamin: Or prayer or whatever that is. But finding a way to get that download, so we know what our next steps are

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Connie Benjamin: And the O stands for overcoming obstacles. Because here’s what I know, I know that when we’re on a purpose driven path.

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Connie Benjamin: It’s not going to be easy because we have to become the person that can fulfill that purpose driven path. So we are going to face obstacles. So will we be able to overcome those and how can we overcome them when they pop up.

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Connie Benjamin: And the S love this. This is a tricky one. It sounds so simple but it’s so complex is surrender.

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Connie Benjamin: to surrender our beliefs to surrender, who we think we are to step into who we can be with the help of the divine

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Connie Benjamin: And he and purpose, you know, this stands for engage with a full heart.

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Connie Benjamin: This is really important. This means out of love for service of other people out of love for service of the divine out of love for service of ourselves and stepping into our full potential. So that is the five keys to unlocking purpose.

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Kathy Gruver: This is going to be a six hour show

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Connie Benjamin: Right, I know each each line is like a whole conversation. I understand.

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Jason Mefford: Well, you might have to come back.

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Kathy Gruver: We’re gonna hit her. And that’s as far as we’re going to get

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Kathy Gruver: You’re gonna have to come back.

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Kathy Gruver: Now this is, I love this because you’ve broken it down in in so many ways. And I’m sitting here, nodding my head going, yes, yes, yes, yes.

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Kathy Gruver: Because I think once once you figure out what you want. That’s always the question I start with you have to start with, with all of those steps that you just went through.

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Kathy Gruver: And the prioritizing I think especially right now. And I don’t know when the show is going to air right now. We’re still in the middle of of coven

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Kathy Gruver: And I think trying to prioritize things is so tough and I there’s so many things that I want to do. There’s so many things on my to do list so many different lanes, I could be in

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Kathy Gruver: That there are some days I go and I don’t do anything but play Pokemon because I don’t know what to do next. I haven’t prioritized any of those things. It’s going back to what

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Kathy Gruver: Sarah Caputo said about being in the weeds and not being true to what your highest good and purposes, at that point. So I love this Jason please chime in, or solve Babylon forever.

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Jason Mefford: I think, let me, let me see if I if I heard you correctly, too, because when you were talking about the right next steps.

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Jason Mefford: Because I think this is one

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Jason Mefford: You know, one of the coaching programs. I’m actually going through right now is, is you know about getting out of your head. Part of it right. It’s just being

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Jason Mefford: And intake whatever these right next steps are because we tend to overthink things

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Jason Mefford: And then we’ll just sit there and we just start thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking

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Jason Mefford: And then nothing ever happens right and it’s, you got to get off your ass and actually go do something right

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Jason Mefford: But I think I thought I heard you say something about fire goals is that which is that the term, right. So maybe explain, that’s a term I haven’t heard. So in trying to find some of the right next steps. What, what, what does that mean that fire goals term that you were thrown out there.

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Connie Benjamin: Awesome you Jason, you haven’t heard it because it’s part of the my feminine system. So it’s part of what I’ve created

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Connie Benjamin: And just to, you know, I created this because I believe that there’s a gap in what’s happening with goals today.

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Connie Benjamin: I think I love how you’re talking about that we do need to be focused on the right. Next step, and we need to get out of our heads.

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Connie Benjamin: And what often happens is we can go when we feel inspired to write a book to start the podcast to start a program, whatever it is, to share our message.

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Connie Benjamin: We can often be caught by our logical minds and it just stops us Kathy, you talked about that we can get distracted. And often that’s what happens with our goals is

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Connie Benjamin: There’s three things that usually come up to block our goals distraction deception things that seem true and are not true and discouragement.

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Connie Benjamin: And so the fire goals is one of I found the most effective ways to hitting those next right steps in a way that is really, really focused and very effective.

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Connie Benjamin: Often we talk about smart goals and I think SMART goals are awesome. It’s great to be smart, but why not freakin be on fire. Like, let’s put our goals on fire. We I get lit up about this because I think that

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Connie Benjamin: There’s a piece missing in SMART goals. And so I really take a stand about that. So fire goals at the first. It’s an acronym because I love acronyms. So the F in fire goal stands for focused goal.

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Connie Benjamin: And that’s a two step process. One is a focus school on what’s our long term vision Kathy, you talked about that. What is, what are we going for, and to be really clear about our long term vision.

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Connie Benjamin: And then the second part to that is what is one next step I can take every day towards that goal.

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Connie Benjamin: So Jason, you talked about how important that is. So, for example, for me, when I was writing my fair or sorry, I have a podcast to when I was writing women with fire that book.

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Connie Benjamin: I said, Okay, I don’t have long stretches of time, but I’ve got 15 minutes I can write in my book for 15 minutes. So that was my focused daily goal.

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Connie Benjamin: Now the i in fire goal stands for. And by the way, this is what is missing in most goal setting programs. This is the thing that drives me crazy because

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Connie Benjamin: If we don’t have this, we will not have a fire lit under our butts. So we can do what we need to do to get her done

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Connie Benjamin: This is what’s going to make that difference. So the i in fire goal stands for incentive having an incentive in place when I do my daily goal. What do I get if I don’t do it. What do I lose. And when I was writing my book I used everything from I can you know

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Connie Benjamin: Some crazy stuff. I can have a shower. As soon as are writing my book for 15 minutes a day. I can check my phone as soon as our writing my book for 15 minutes a day. I can have the smoothie that I like instead of the one that is 95% kale.

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Connie Benjamin: As soon as it right as soon as they’re reading my book for 15 minutes a day.

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Connie Benjamin: So I had that incentive to light a fire under my butt and the art stand in fire goals stands for responsibility.

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Connie Benjamin: Recognizing that when we have a goal that’s an inspired goal, and I believe that that is important for us to have these inspired goals when we have that, we have a responsibility.

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Connie Benjamin: We have a responsibility to our future self, we have a responsibility to our creator or that higher power.

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Connie Benjamin: And we have a responsibility to the person that we’re going to bless either from achieving that goal or from inspiring other people by achieving that goal.

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Connie Benjamin: And so to recognizing that we’ve got a responsibility here and tell someone you know I became an author, THE MOMENT I’VE GOT ON A Facebook Live and said, Hey, I’m Connie Benjamin, author of the upcoming book women with fire that literally had one chapter written

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Connie Benjamin: And I said it, and it was awkward. But that’s when I came an author. So, and the. So that’s the fire goals. Now they be and this is so important is to have an exact time

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Connie Benjamin: When exactly am I going to achieve that goal. You know, when I’m writing my book I can have a shower. As soon as I’m writing my book for 15 minutes every day at 6am, and if I do it, I get the great smoothie. And if I don’t get this movie that’s 95% kale.

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Jason Mefford: But I think it’s interesting because I’ve done a lot with incentives in the corporate environment, you know, as well. And it’s it’s it’s interesting psychologically to

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Jason Mefford: How you bring up the good versus the bad incentive because, as humans, again, based on how our brain works. We’re three times more likely to think of negative things or want to avoid.

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Jason Mefford: Things that we believe are threatening or risk to us, we’re much more likely to take action to avoid

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Jason Mefford: A bad thing than we are to get a good thing. I mean, it’s just crazy, right. That’s how it ends up working. So actually I like how you put in there with the incentive. It’s both right. Do you want the

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Jason Mefford: You want the Kale Smoothie today. Connie, or you’re gonna write that chapter.

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Jason Mefford: Chapter. Right. Um, yeah, that would that actually that can help to also propel us and moves forward as well too. Yeah.

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Kathy Gruver: Yeah, and I grew up in a house where it was. Do your homework before you could watch TV.

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Kathy Gruver: And I remember having to inspire myself that way in college where if I had a long paper do

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Kathy Gruver: Like I would have to go to the bathroom so bad, but like you have to finish this paragraph. And then you could go to the bathroom. It’s like I had to do that to myself to get motivated

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Kathy Gruver: And I’ve almost kind of let that go. Now, and especially with so much free time.

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Kathy Gruver: One of the things I wanted to do was finished my next book. I’m about halfway through, you know, I haven’t picked up. I haven’t done one one paragraph of it again.

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Kathy Gruver: And I had to actually question will then is this really important to me.

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Kathy Gruver: Because if I truly want to do that thing. I have had all the time in there. I could have written 13 books in the amount of time I’ve been sitting at home.

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Kathy Gruver: Do I really want that thing. And so I actually had to think about that, you know, is this important to me. Is this an inspired goal.

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Kathy Gruver: If I’ve not spent the time on it, or am I just being lazy. So for some with its kind of in that situation. Connie, you know, how do we determine what we really want is that something we want to actually put our time towards

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Connie Benjamin: And love that question. That is so powerful. I think there’s a couple things that we can do and I’m so passionate about getting clear about a purpose, because I believe that it fuels everything else.

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Connie Benjamin: In fact, I just talked to an incredible philanthropist and and world class entrepreneur. She’s literally given a million dollars to charity, just from the work that she does.

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Connie Benjamin: And one of the first things out of her mouth is Connie. I know how important it is to live my purpose because when I when I’m living my purpose. I’m lit up when I’m not living my purpose. I’m not

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Connie Benjamin: And so I share that with you because I think that’s what happens when we have a goal that we need to achieve.

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Connie Benjamin: If we can get really clear about our purpose we get lit up, we’re willing to crawl over glass to do what we need to do, we’re willing to face those obstacles.

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Connie Benjamin: And that’s why I’ve actually developed a purpose discovery session where I just walk people through how to get clear on your purpose. What does this look like

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Connie Benjamin: Because I think that that’s the starting place. And once we’re. And by the way, once we get clear on that purpose.

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Connie Benjamin: Then what we do. Cathy is and I love how you talk about like being really clear about is this something I really want. So one of the ways that is really effective to do that is go to meditation.

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Connie Benjamin: Go to that quiet space and ask. Ask i would i would say there’s two steps. Ask the Creator. Is this what you want me to do.

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Connie Benjamin: With that divine purpose that divine source, whatever that is universe creator Allah God, whatever that is for you go to that divine source ask, is this what would you have me do next.

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Connie Benjamin: And then seek within yourself and say what lights me up and I know for myself that every single time I’ve done that. I mean, I’ve gotten inspiration to do crazy crap, I’m talking like

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Connie Benjamin: You know, I got inspiration. Okay, kind of pick up your family and move across move to another country in six days.

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Connie Benjamin: Did it. I literally picked up my family moved to another country in six days I got inspiration, what are you going to do

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Connie Benjamin: You know i and this is worked with every single. And by the way, doing that decision is what helped me launch my book. It’s what helped me launch my podcast. It’s all it opened up a bunch of doors for me.

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Connie Benjamin: So part of part of that conversation also needs to be said that

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Connie Benjamin: We will not see the end result we won’t know when we get that inspiration Kathy when you’re sitting there being like okay

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Connie Benjamin: Creator universe. What do you want me to do next. If you get inspiration about that book. You may not know what that has in store for you what that book is where it’s going to lead you

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Connie Benjamin: Or maybe you get inspiration. Don’t write the book do this instead focus on this, but the awareness that there is a bigger plan. And as we take smaller steps towards it. It’s like our past gets illuminated. We do not have the we do not have the

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Connie Benjamin: Gift of seeing exactly where our paths will lead you can just see the next step. Yeah.

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Kathy Gruver: I love that. And I love to talk about that inspiration to just pick up and move because that’s how I got to California.

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Kathy Gruver: I knew I had to go and I knew I had to be here by a certain amount of time and literally right before Christmas. I set my dad down and said, I’m leaving.

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Kathy Gruver: Now because I wasn’t gonna leave till the following year. And he goes, Why now, and I said, I gotta go. Now I have to be in California before Christmas, and I arrived in California. On December 21

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Kathy Gruver: And I have not. I haven’t looked back, I knew I had to do that thing and I listened to that urging whether I’m working one on one with a client and I’m urged to ask them a question or urge to say something during a talk. I know there’s a reason behind that.

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Kathy Gruver: Is there a way to other than sitting in meditation. Is there a way to tap more into those are I mean is we ignore them so often.

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Kathy Gruver: And I’ve learned over the years. I need to frickin listen to what it’s saying, even if it sounds ridiculous to me. I mean, I have asked clients questions that makes zero sense to me. But it’s so meaningful to them. And I think tapping into that is truly one of the keys. So, this

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Kathy Gruver: Is it just about sitting and listening.

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Connie Benjamin: I that’s a starting place. So it’s absolutely a starting place there’s more to it. And in my book I actually outlined the four steps to connecting with the divine

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Connie Benjamin: To get inspiration I believe that inspiration leads us to where we want to we need to go and purpose now.

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Connie Benjamin: One of the things that and I do have that purpose discovery session and I’m happy, actually, to give all your listeners for free. You can just get on it and do that. That’s a good starting place.

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Connie Benjamin: But another thing that we can do is actually go into

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Connie Benjamin: We have to understand the process of inspiration, so there’s there’s a couple things to be aware of.

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Connie Benjamin: When we get inspiration. Yes, it’s our Divine Self listening to that. But we also need to understand that it’s a divine source, giving it to us. So, and I share that with you.

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Connie Benjamin: I think that some people that seems. Of course it is. And to some people. That seems no it’s not. But I share that with you because we have to understand there’s something bigger going on.

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Connie Benjamin: And that we can receive that divine inspiration, there’s a two way communication that can happen with the divine

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Connie Benjamin: So when we understand that, then we can begin that conversation. The first thing is to get in a place of

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Connie Benjamin: Quiet in your mind. It doesn’t need to be meditation. It doesn’t need to be anything, you know, sitting on the beach like meditating for an hour. That is not, I don’t have time for that either.

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Connie Benjamin: So it’s just right. It’s just about these quiet moments are we taking quiet moments. Maybe it’s journaling. Maybe it’s it’s whatever it is.

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Connie Benjamin: And are we asking. So this is a first step, the first step is asked, are we asking because if we’re not going to ask. We’re not going to receive it.

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Connie Benjamin: The next step is writing it down. We receiving inspiration from the divine is a divine gift if we receive just like if someone gave gave me a gift. And I said,

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Connie Benjamin: Oh, open up in a year. I’ll open it later, we forget about that gift. It’s a dis honoring of that gift.

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Connie Benjamin: One way that we recognize and honor the gift is we write it down so we can have a remembrance, because I can promise you remember earlier I said that when we’re on a path of purpose.

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Connie Benjamin: We will receive obstacles along our way. And so what happens is we need to understand that when we receive inspiration right after that, if we do not write it down there will be a distraction. Hundred percent

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Connie Benjamin: The kids will come in the phone call will ring, somebody will try and I don’t know say there’s an emergency, you have to deal with. There will be a distraction. So we have not captured that we could spend the next year trying to receive that inspiration again.

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Connie Benjamin: We can sense. And then the third step is action. We have to act on that inspiration. That is one of the biggest ways. So Kathy how you beautifully talked about you got inspiration to go to California.

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Connie Benjamin: You move to California. You did not. You know what it is. You can feel it in your heart in your gut, like it’s a feeling

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Connie Benjamin: And. And then the last thing is to continue that cycle to show gratitude. Sorry. That’s the last step, the fourth step is to show gratitude show gratitude for the divine for giving us at that inspiration. Yeah.

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Kathy Gruver: That’s great. I remember listening to Carolyn mace. I did a bunch of studying with her.

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Kathy Gruver: And she said that you know everybody talks about I want purpose. I want to do this big thing, and everyone’s waiting for this giant thing that they’re to do. And she goes, You guys can’t even do your PT exercises every day.

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Kathy Gruver: Like, how the hell do you think you’re going to do that. The divine is going to give you some giant thing if you can’t take out the trash like how are you showing up to do those small things.

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Kathy Gruver: You know, if you expect the big thing, but you can’t do the small things. So that was interesting. Um, hey,

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Jason Mefford: I know we are

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Kathy Gruver: Surprised

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Jason Mefford: Okay, just kind of sit

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Kathy Gruver: Because

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Jason Mefford: Kind of to go on on to that a little bit, you know, is, is that whole idea if you’re not willing to do the small things.

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Jason Mefford: Then the universe isn’t going to give you the big thing because it’s like you’re not listening. And if you’re not listening that I’m not going to give you anything bigger right

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Jason Mefford: You know, because again, I love those. The kind of these four steps that you were talking about because one of the questions that I was going to have before is

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Jason Mefford: You know, a lot of times I think the monkey brain gets in the way. Right. And people are kind of like, well, is this inspiration or is this just my monkey brain going on right

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Jason Mefford: But the more that we kind of go through and continue this cycle that you’re talking about a quiet your mind. Ask write it down, take some action show gratitude.

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Jason Mefford: And the more that we do this. It’s literally it’s almost like we’re, again, we’re exercising our, our muscles. Our brain muscles, if you will, how to say that right

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Jason Mefford: And so, like you said, Connie. When you got the inspiration I need to move to a new country and six days, you did it right, you didn’t know why. But you did it. And then afterwards you could see that yes, everything worked out.

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Jason Mefford: I mean, you can’t move to a new country in six days, unless it’s supposed to happen. It just doesn’t work.

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Kathy Gruver: Unless you’re fleeing

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Jason Mefford: unless unless you’re

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Jason Mefford: Unless you’re fleeing, for some reason, right, you just have a suitcase in your hand, and that’s it.

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Jason Mefford: So you know that as as we’re trying to develop this or learn more how it actually works, right, is that when we have those good things like, hey, we did it in six days. Cool. Okay, what did I

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Jason Mefford: How did I feel what, how did I get that inspiration, because I think for each of us. And maybe it’s a little bit different, too.

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Jason Mefford: But the more that you kind of practice it and go through these steps that you talked about, then we can become more confident as well that when these things happen even when it’s crazy, you know,

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Jason Mefford: Call your friend send this person text. Ask your client a question that makes absolutely no sense to you, the more that we actually do those things. And then we get that confirmation. Afterwards, the more confident we can be in actually doing. Yeah, I agree.

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Kathy Gruver: I love this. I want to keep talking. But we have to go. Okay. Connie you’ve given us so much amazing information you so totally have to come back. Most definitely.

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Kathy Gruver: Tell everybody where to reach you. I love that you’re offering that free. Tell us about the free set is this full sleeves, like a session as an online thing. What is and then how to reach you.

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Connie Benjamin: Love it. Thank you so much. By the way, this was incredible. You guys are so fun. And I love this conversation.

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Connie Benjamin: So for the purpose discovery session. It is something online. You literally just log on and get it and do the exercise, you just need a pen and a paper and so quiet time

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Connie Benjamin: So that you can get for free. Just go to www.my fire within.com slash purpose. Again, that’s www.my fire then.com slash purpose and

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Connie Benjamin: Just to show you how profound. That is my husband, we’ve been doing personal development for a decade teaching personal development for a decade.

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Connie Benjamin: My husband’s comes to me after I walked him through the process. He says, Connie.

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Connie Benjamin: I’ve been people been trying to help me know my purpose for a decade. And I’ve never felt more clear. I know what it is. I know what it is.

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Connie Benjamin: And so it’s just so powerful and that is constantly the feedback that we’re getting. So that’s a starting place and reach out to me. I want to support you, my, my goal and mission, if in this life.

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Connie Benjamin: Is to support people being lit up, get lit up and reach out to me on Facebook. I’d love to. I’d love to see you there.

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Kathy Gruver: Yay, good. Oh, I’m so excited. This has been phenomenal Jason, you wanna check us out.

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Jason Mefford: Well yeah, I was gonna say. And you know, it’s got to be powerful because if your husband comes to you and tells you that it’s not natural.

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Jason Mefford: Young ladies for

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Jason Mefford: For

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Kathy Gruver: For a man to go to the wife and

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Jason Mefford: Say something like that. So, you know, that’s actually works right when he actually says stuff.

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Connie Benjamin: Like that.

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Jason Mefford: But no, this is, this is, this is great. It’s another way of kind of saying I love the steps I love acronyms to

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Jason Mefford: Is one of the things I love to do is help people learn quicker and actually learn not just getting knowledge, but actually learn acronyms are one of the little hacks.

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Jason Mefford: In learning things quicker because we can keep track of these things easier and it’s remember fire. Fire stands for focus goal incentive responsibility exact time. See, I’ve been taking notes to

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Jason Mefford: Which is another one. But anyway, so, Connie. Thank you for coming on. I really appreciate it and know that this is going to help lots of people out there listening. So with that, though. Kathy’s tailing we gotta, we gotta sign off so

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Kathy Gruver: Oh, I’m Kathy Gruber. I can be reached if you’re gonna go I’m Kathy. Kathy Coover calm.

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Jason Mefford: Jason effort.

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Jason Mefford: I can be reached at Jason method calm.

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Jason Mefford: And I just wanted to do another little pause of silence.

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Jason Mefford: There at the end just to mess with everybody who’s listening.

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Jason Mefford: So everybody go out, have a great week and we will catch you on the next episode of the fire earth podcast see

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Ya.

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