Use Communication to Increase the Value of Your Business

Starting the conversation:

Discover the power of self-awareness and intentional relationships to drive growth. The key is taking initiatives steeped in openness and honesty for real connection with real potential. Grace Gavin, Co-Founder at Know Honesty, shares how being intentional creates more opportunity for success.

Making a commitment to be present and on purpose with every relationship changes everything. Even striving to be mission-driven and unapologetically authentic with great moves, communication is a two-way street — one where we also have to put aside everything we want, in order to be fully present and hear what others want. Honest communication creates a path forward to overcome challenges along the journey to goal attainment.

In this program you will hear about the power of bringing in an outside set of eyes, understanding how to take action (or not) on all the thoughts you have, and the building blocks to have open and honest conversations to build depth and fortify relationships. Jess Dewell discusses with Grace Gavin, Co-Founder at Know Honesty, about how to create intentional growth opportunities through open and honest communication.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Grace Gavin

What You Will Hear:

3:57 The first business growth plateau arrived and this is how Grace Gavin faced it.

• Procrastination by prioritizing other things.
• Faced the lack of momentum and growth plateaus head.
• There are many on the journey building a thriving business.

8:15 It is important to bring in an outside set of eyes.

• Add missing structure and change the lens by looking at what you have.
• Systems that we use are tools, and sometimes we need to be reminded that we can change the way we use them.
• External perspectives add to your internal expertise with different business lenses and experiences.

12:05 Learn to know yourself because when you do, you can:

• Learn to trust others.
• Really hear what is being shared.
• Sit with yourself and reflect on your own thoughts.
• Consider with intention what was learned.

21:40 Know yourself and how your own perspective shows up in your goals and with your clients.

• Using the information we’ve learned in new and different ways.
• Know what you want and how you feel — share openly and honestly to others.
• Put our needs on pause for someone else.
• If I want to be heard I must hear others.
• We must take the first step and do this work.

22:20 It is your responsibility to regulate your emotions.

• This is challenging. Anger, resentment, and fear may cause overreactions which cause overreactions from others toward you.
• Getting to know yourself includes knowing your triggers and how to de-escalate yourself.
• Figure out what you can do for yourself when stuck in a situation.
• The power of discovery questions.

26:20 There is a cost to NOT being open and honest.

• The bumps and plateaus in business are bigger.
• Isolation and loneliness are the result of shallow relationships.
• How you can take the first step because it can be life or death.
• Challenge: Ask the other person what they think of your relationship.
• Use “The Agreement” to slowly build deep, real relationships.

37:00 The power of our social safety net.

• We can lead disconnected lives, which is made really easy with all the time-saving tricks and technology.
• It is scary to be known by another person, to really be seen by them.
• How we show up is in our control; be curious about what the relationship could be.
• Be honest about the reality of the situation, make it meaningful.

47:50 It is BOLD to be intentional about creating your own opportunity.

Resources

• Know Honesty
• Agreement or Cohesion

Transcript

Jess Dewell 00:00
I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for stopping by. At the Bold Business Podcast, we are normalizing important conversations. Yes, there are tips. Yes, there are ways to solve problems. More importantly, are going to be what do you need for yourself to be able to solve those problems and make the most of the education, the training and the programs that you are already using. This is a supplement to that it can sit on top of it, fuel your soul, fuel your mind, and most importantly, regardless of where you’re at on your journey, maybe you’re starting out, maybe you’re ready to scale, maybe you’re going through reinvention, the conversations we are having will help you at each of those stages. So hang around, see what’s going on, and I look forward to seeing you engaging with our videos.

Grace Gavin 00:49
Every time you meet, you have a choice. Am I going to be open? Am I going to be honest here, or am I just gonna step away and not step into that?

ANNOUNCER 01:02
You are listening to the Bold Business Podcast where you will hear first-hand experiences about what it really takes to ensure market relevance and your company’s future.

Jess Dewell 01:14
One, bringing an outside set of eyes to bring structure and accountability when it will be useful. Two, thinking about, what am I doing with all of these thoughts that I’m having? And three, being open and honest. If I want to be her, I must be ready and willing and open to hear others. Those are just three things that grace Gavin from no honesty. And I talk about in this conversation, we go real deep, and what I appreciate is the ability to self reflect only helps us as much as we self-reflect. And the basis for that is sure for us to get better and know ourselves and have a, have an understanding of the world around us, but it’s also when we understand that about ourselves, we can, with intention, set all of that aside knowing who we are, so that we can listen to somebody else and really hear who they are, hear what they’re about, what is on the heart of mind, what do they have to say, and remain curious and present with them. Grace Gavin is a catalyst for open and honest communication. The goal being effective leadership. The goal being taking the right systems and the right processes and being able to make them work better more, maybe for the first time ever, through communication, because organizational gaps typically come from communication mishaps. So her diverse background, from farm life to executive roles, the experience that comes with that is perfect for her being a co-founder at no honesty. She’s passionate about inclusivity and the transformative power of being open and being honest. Grace is striving to create workplaces where every individual’s voice is valued. I can’t wait for you to hear those three things. Let’s get to it. When did you know that this book needed to be written. Was it this huge aha moment, or was it this uncovering? What was it?

Grace Gavin 03:25
I know you’re gonna ask me questions that nobody else asks me, so I’m already loving this. Ken had always thought about writing a book or doing something as we were continuing to see this issue come up again and again with leadership teams that we were talking to, their just their inability to communicate, and how much that just wrecked them, whether they had a system in place and processes and things like that, but if they couldn’t communicate, it didn’t really matter. And then the question became, how do we help people do this? We started with the book, saying, Okay, how do we reach the most people possible? Book is still the best medium for that, because he and I can work with leadership teams, and we can work with back-to-back sessions, and I could work weekends and all of these things and still not touch as many people as we could with a book. The people that I’m talking to are leadership team members. But this work is applicable for anybody in their life, and most people won’t come into a session room with me. I get to impact a very small percentage of people that hopefully it spurs past, into their organization, into their clients, and all those things, and it ripple effects. But the question was, how do we impact more people? And that’s where the book came from. Out of that. We talked about a book, and people like, how do we put numbers to this? So we created the assessment, and then the process came out of working with clients. It’s been an entire evolution. I think you see most people work in their fields for 20 years and then write a book about all of their experiences. We started from the jump with a book, which I think is just a different way of doing it. It’s. Really interesting to see, because already in Jess, we locked in the manuscript in July, Jess and I already have had conversations with Ken about the second book and stories that we put in it, because we’re constantly learning. So how do we share this with people? The book is one way, and then going on podcasts, and I tell different stories and different ones, because there’s different things that are impacting me in the conversation that we’re having and sharing it with people is really exciting.

Jess Dewell 05:24
I appreciate that backstory, and I’m excited to hear that you didn’t follow some plan. These were the things that showed up. So this is what we did. It doesn’t matter how many processes or systems you have, if you can’t communicate, that’s where the plateau will be period. And I’m guessing we’ll choose writing the book as an example. Even in that deciding to do this, showing up, figuring it out, there were plateaus along the way. Yeah, what were the first one? And how did you face it?

Grace Gavin 06:00
We had been dabbling around the book, but putting it off quarter after quarterly distance of the time we need to serve these clients. And then we got to the quarter and decided, okay, we’d write this many pages. So we sent Ken away to an Airbnb for two days. And I said, don’t worry about anything. I’ll handle it. You just write. Okay, you got all these ideas. You just write. It comes back after those two days and has maybe two pages. I don’t even remember. It was not a lot. And what we realized, and we tried it a few more times, and workshop did it a couple different ways, and it just was not he couldn’t sit and write it. He is a fantastic speaker and coaching consultant, and it just, I don’t know what happened sometimes, it doesn’t translate as well. And it’s just interesting to see we had that first plateau, and I was like, Okay, now what do we do? We talked to other authors and looked at different options, and said, Okay, ghostwriter, and interviewed a bunch of different ghostwriters. Thought we found the right one. Got into that relationship probably three to six months. I don’t remember it’s this has been like a three, three and a half year journey. And so we got into that. And just having discussions with her, it wasn’t quite the right fit. She didn’t get what we were doing. It just wasn’t aligned that way. And so hit another plateau. I really like reading. I love writing. Why don’t I take a stab at it? I would write in the spare time that I had between working with clients and meetings. It was going better, but I didn’t have any kind of structure. I was just writing about things we had talked about, or working with clients and stories. It still wasn’t quite right. We hit that plateau. Then we realized we need structure, we need accountability, we need help with this. Then we found out there’s something called a book architect had no idea that was a thing before brought in Justin, and he was fantastic, and said, Send me everything that you got. Here’s some questions I want to know about your big ideas. Took all of this as just pages and pages of Google Docs and word documents, and put it all into a concise table of contents for us, and sent us week after week. Here’s chapter one, write that send it back to me. Here’s chapter two. Here’s your big ideas, write that send it back to me and he’s editing it during those times and questions, but really just creating that structure and accountability to get it done. And then we had to engage with a publisher. We hit that plateau where the manuscript is done, but what do we do? And there was a little bit of a overlap there, so not necessarily a full plateau, but then getting into that, and then it’s the editing process and getting the cover all along the way. It’s just figuring out, what do we not know and who can we engage in this that’s going to help us? Because otherwise, I don’t know. We could still be writing the book. It could still be another three years out, getting the people we know, we knew we’re the open and honest experts. We knew our stuff, but how to get that onto the page was so much harder than you think it is.

Jess Dewell 08:46
The sharing of that is powerful because I was not expecting you to actually be able to go, Look, this was a plateau. So we faced we decided it was a challenge, and we’re going to go for it. Oh, look, we went for it, and it gave us new data. And so what now? We now have something else we can take action on because we came to a pause again of what do we do now? And it’s amazing how life is like that. And we think our projects, our goals, the habits we’re creating, the things that we want to do, are different from this. Somehow, yet it shows up everywhere, doesn’t it Grace?

Grace Gavin 09:21
I think what’s really key is bringing in other experts or other people, something we talk to our clients about. But just in general, we live in this shared world with people, and we can’t expect to go it alone or to only work on getting what we want if we don’t help others get what they want and understand each other. What’s the point? Number one, but number two, holy cow, would it be so much harder? And it wouldn’t, this book would not be as good as it is. I can say that confidently because it’s not just me. It’s Ken’s stories. It’s my stories. It’s our edit. We went through so many rounds of edits. It’s Justin helping us with the structure. It’s our publisher getting everything together. And I can guarantee that it is a much. Better book because of that than if I had tried to write it alone, or if Ken had tried to write it alone.

Jess Dewell 10:04
So Justin added a little bit of missing structure to be more on purpose when outside set of eyes was just one way you added something to be accountable to. Here’s what I want and when, or here’s what makes sense to look at right now, giving a deadline to help keep things moving along right? Are there other ways that accountability showed up in your process, or that you brought in from other parts of your life to get this done?

Grace Gavin 10:33
So we run on EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. It’s a proven system to run your business on. And so we met quarter after quarter and said, How are we pushing this book along? How are we pushing this book along? How many chapters will we get done this quarter? How many pages? What stage of editing will we be in? When will the audiobook be done? Building accountability that way was key. At the end of the day, Justin could hold us accountable, but we were a client of his, so we could dictate. He said, Look, we can do this in six months. We can write the entire book, and you can have your manuscript ready to take to your publisher. It actually took us a year and four months, so over double, almost triple the time. And that is not by Justin’s fault by any means. It was just the stage of the business that we were in where we got to scale it back and recognize we still are serving clients, and we have this project we’re working on. And to do both Well, we got to scale it back and not try to bite off all of the pages at once and bring that accountability to each other. And I think Ken and I having each other as accountability really helps. We’ve been working together for six years now, and we are clear on how our relationship works, and the accountability and pushing each other. Knowing when to push each other is important, Jess, because Ken’s annual season is December through February with clients, and it is insane. And so I know, and we know now planning-wise, we’re not getting a lot from him in that season in my personal life, summer is crazy. I just got married. And so knowing the capacity that way, and saying, okay, my team likes to tell me, like, you love to bite off a lot and you can get a lot done. You absolutely can, but we want you to scale it back a little bit, because we don’t want you to hit capacity halfway through the quarter and not get all the things done. And so just knowing that really well about each other already coming into the process helped a lot and learning more about each other through it too.

Jess Dewell 12:25
Did you come into this world with that skill? [No.] Was it? Was that an easy learning? Tell me more about that.

Grace Gavin 12:34
It is a constant learning, and it is an ongoing journey. And I think that some people might be listening. They’re like, What do you mean? It’s a journey to know yourself, don’t you just know? Maybe for some people, that’s true, but for me, it’s not. Each new challenge we faced. I’ve learned something new about myself working through bringing this book out into the world and working with clients. I’ve taken on coaches on the sales side of things because I knew I needed help there, my sales coach, Rob, and she’s fantastic, and she’s just unveiling things and saying in a different way than what I thought about. I was like, Wow, maybe I knew that, but now you’ve put it in a completely different perspective. And then on the other side of things, I think is really important for me as I’m leading clients, is that I’m continuing to develop myself, because I’m asking for self-development out of them, and I’m asking for growth. It is professional, but it does bleed into their personal lives too. I’ve stepped into a new form of therapy, and I don’t know about you, but I’m a huge fan of therapy. I love it. I’ve been in it since 2021 and done different forms along the way, and each way has helped me learn a little bit more about myself. And then what I’m not as great at is just sitting with myself in prayer, meditation, whatever people want to call it, but learning that is huge for me right now too, just learning to sit still for a moment, because I constantly want to get to the next thing and I want to complete the project and I want an A plus on it. We need to undo that or untie that and understand and how do we do it in a way that serves others also?

Jess Dewell 14:05
Share your thoughts and comments below. I thrive on your feedback and engagement. You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast. I’m your host, Jess Dewell. This is your program for strategizing long-term success while diving deep into what the right work is for your business right now.

ANNOUNCER 14:13
If you are ready to make a real impact in your business, and you’ve waited too long to take action, go to reddirection.com and click on solutions to find out how.

Jess Dewell 14:33
I am an avid reader. I listen to podcasts. This is my medium, having conversations, learning from conversations, experiencing this, I am very tactile, though, whether I’m listening or reading, and it’s usually through reading, as I’m taking notes or highlighting, there’s something that’ll stand out to me. I’m glad I wrote that down, because it fits here, which is being able to shift from a this is a positive or negative to this. Just is, what can I make it is a pretty big deal. And I think I read that yesterday somewhere, and I can’t remember. I don’t remember if Osho said it. So if it’s on that side of things where I like said, I don’t know where it came from. But I had the book by Osho around here, and I was listening doing something else. It sounds a little bit like that in the sense of, okay, can I sit with myself and understanding the reason I am the way that I am, but not necessarily needing to change.

Grace Gavin 15:30
Figuring out how to channel it in a way to serve people and figure out, okay, if this is my default, then how do I utilize in such a way that, that helps people, and then still working through that and working through a healing journey to get to where I can help others and helps them through my tough things that I’ve been through, so that maybe they don’t experience it, or maybe if they still do, because there’s a lesson in there for them to Learn, they at least know they’re not alone,

Jess Dewell 16:02
Correct because we all have our own challenges, and even if it’s not direct, you’re actually walking your own path. Of something I’ve walked over here. There is something to learn from. There is something to be with. How do you sit with yourself?

Grace Gavin 16:16
I’ve recently tried, not recently so much, but have gotten more committed to it is meditation and just, holy cow. Is it fascinating to be inside my brains because it is just like a buzzing all around I’m like, Look at all these thoughts. So no wonder I get to the end of the day and I’m tired. What am I doing with all of them? And I’ll think about them, and also seeing where I might ruminate, and then understanding, is there something I can do about that, or can I let that go? I do a lot of journaling too. I find that really helps. I create gratitude lists, and I don’t I know everybody says gratitude list, but I like to think about it as good things in my life. Sometimes it’s my husband making dinner, or it’s Ken and I had a really great conversation. What are the good things in my life? Or my niece said a funny joke and it was hilarious. All of those little things that add up a lot, and some of them are big conversations, like I’m working with a new client, or I had a really great presentation or workshop. Things like that, from the big to the small is really big for me, because I think, as people who are constantly I’ll speak for myself, going for the next project, completing the next thing. I struggle to stop and pause and think sometimes, after I meet with somebody, I’ll block in a little bit of time, whether I’m driving back to the office or I’m staying there for a minute, and I’ll just think about the conversation, and what did I learn from that when I’m working with clients, of just sitting there and thinking, what stories did I hear today? What did I learn from that? And what can I share to help others? And going so quickly? Sometimes, yes, we get a lot done, but sometimes we miss the lesson, or we miss the story that could help us in the next journey,

Jess Dewell 17:59
And it’s going to be unique to us. That’s the part I think people forget about in reflection. I’m a huge reflection person like you. I have a lot of thoughts like you. I’m not exactly sure where they all go or if I actually got to use them all, and what if I was harnessing them differently sooner I get that. And what did I learn from that can help me right now? What did I learn from that I can share with share with others? Because it’s on my heart right now. One of the things I found over the years is that we think things are set in stone. That was the lesson, and it has to be that way. I’m not sure about you, Grace, but I have books that I reread just a handful, and every time I read them, even though the last time I was like, that was the lesson. Nope, there’s a different lesson. Because I’m a new me at a new time with a new set of challenges and goals and aspirations that it makes it different.

Grace Gavin 18:53
Dr. Benjamin Hardy, I saw him speak once, and he talked about your past self, your present self, and your future self, decisions we make impact the future, but thinking about our past self and how that impacts our future self, and how we can actually go back, rewrite our stories or learn a different lesson from them. Maybe I’m going to speak with a prospective client, and I absolutely crush it, but they still say, No, I could tell myself a really defeating story about that and how they didn’t like me and all of these things, or I could go back and rewrite that story and say it wasn’t the time for them. And when they’re ready, they will come to me that will impact my future self, because now I’m looking for the opportunity staying in touch with those leaders, and say, Hey, how you doing? Are you ready for this? Versus just saying, Oh, they didn’t like me. And so I’m done. I’m walking away. We can rewrite our past stories in that way, and it impacts our future.

Jess Dewell 19:45
I talk to my future self all the time. I also say thank you to my past self all the time. I’m like, Oh, look what I did there. Thanks past self that actually ends up in my gratitude. When I’m doing the gratitude, my gratitude work is, oh, look at how cool. My past stuff was, or what was my past self-thinking? I guess I’m going to show up and do this because they believed in me. [I love that.] To your point of reframing some of the stories and I had when you were talking about your team, going, Hey, sure, this is possible. Please don’t pack yourself to capacity, because stuff always happens. That’s the relationship that I’ve built with my future self and my past self. And then I have a team to double check that, even because I’m still over excited about what is possible in a day or a month or a quarter or a year, and so that’s very neat. Tell me that person’s name again, Dr. [Benjamin Hardy] with this work that you’ve been doing most recently, and this knowing yourself which parts of it right now are showing up when you are thinking about your book being launched, and also the work you’re doing with your clients.

Grace Gavin 20:53
All of it, I think about what I’ve learned previously, that I’m just a learner at heart. I like to learn things. I like to know about human psychology and how people work, partially to understand myself better, but also just to understand the world and people in it. I’ve read a lot of books around it and thought about it a lot and looked into different topics, not understanding how that would connect to me now. Because if you would have asked me when I was reading those books years ago, how is this going to impact your life? And it was in that moment really helpful, realizing how it pulls in today, and talking with clients and talking with individuals throughout the book, and things like learning about schizmo Genesis, which is the idea of in groups and out groups. So I’m like, that’s just super cool. And then I happened to use it in a workshop a couple weeks ago with a client, because they were talking about, we have teams and we have this team, but we’re all one team, and so how do we do that? What’s happening right now is schizmo Genesis, and they’re like, Huh? I know I learned that for a reason, and sometimes we don’t realize why, and so I think about that all the time, of the knowledge that I’ve learned and gained simply at the time for myself, and now being able to give it away to people with clients, and doing that with the book, with working with clients, and making it just abundantly clear on what we’re talking about when it comes to communication. And so when I’m teaching clients, what we’re talking about is being open and honest. What I see happening a lot of times is that people smash those together, and they say, I’m going to be open and honest, but they don’t actually realize what it is that they mean. And taking a pause to think about like we’re talking about reflection and so honesty, as we define it, as being truly and freely yourself, speaking into what you want and how you feel. I think about the conversation we’ve had thus far, and talking about reflection in ourselves and thinking about those things, and how do we grow all about ourselves, that’s fantastic. But if we don’t realize the other side of communication, which is openness, listening without reservation, putting our needs and wants on pause for someone else, then what is all that learning for? What is all that if we cannot share cannot share it with others, and others cannot share what they have learned with us? And so we have to have those two halves of communication. We have to have us being honest with others, and then somebody else on the other side, who’s open to it, who’s willing to listen without reservation. If we want that to be the case for ourselves, then it has to be true in reverse. And so if I want to be heard, then I need to hear others. I’ve learned that lesson in so many different ways, and now being able to pass it along to clients is just it’s really a gift and a privilege of my life.

Jess Dewell 23:37
We face a lot of things in this world, right? There’s so much happening at any given point in time. What’s really powerful here is that there’s always something competing for our head, heart or gut, the space with which we are making decisions and able to show up. It could be an aging parent, it could be a teenager. It could be the stage we are in our relationships, in our personal lives, with our spouses or partners. It could be in business with our business partners or executive peers, right? Whatever that is, there’s going to be something that is always pushing at us to be able to take all this work that we’ve been talking about so far. Just who are we in knowing ourselves, we have to trust in that so we can do that for somebody else and make that first step. What I hear you saying is that’s the first step to building a bridge into something.

Grace Gavin 24:31
I think that’s absolutely part of it, realizing that it’s not about knowing ourselves completely or fully or perfectly, and we understand ourselves in relation to others as well. So if we don’t have those open and honest relationships, then how do we understand ourselves in context of our life? If we just hold on to all of the things that we’ve learned and we don’t share them, maybe somebody else has all of these things that they’ve learned. Jess, maybe you have a story that could unlock something for me, but if I’m not. Here to be open to you, to listen to you, then I cannot receive that, and I cannot learn for myself and vice-versa.

Jess Dewell 25:06
What’s the cost of not doing this work, Grace?

Grace Gavin 25:10
If you don’t have people that are heard and respected, they are out the door. All of the things associated with retention, with turnover, all of that we could go relationship-wise. You go through life not have any real relationships. Yes, we might have tons and tons of friends or family, but how many of your relationships are real? How many of them can you get real with people? When we think about it in those terms, we lead to isolation and loneliness, which at the surface can seem like, Oh, I’m lonely. It’s not a big deal, but they’ve done studies, and if you experience isolation, loneliness for a sustained period of time, but any time period, it increases your risk of a premature death by nearly 30% I think loneliness is 26% and social isolation is 29% so when we’re talking about it, that’s a lot. That’s scary. We’re talking about it financially, business-wise, we’re talking about a relationships. We’re talking about quite literally, life and death, if we don’t have real relationships, if we end up being isolated and alone, which can happen even if you have a lot of relationships, if they’re not real, and so encouraging people to take that step into it and to have a real relationship, because I guarantee on the other side that other person probably also wants a real relationship, but doesn’t know how to start it doesn’t know where to go, or maybe it’s gone on for so long that it just seems too hard now And then what happens? We just live that way forever. I believe we have this one wild and precious life and to not live it with real relationships, to not live it with what going after, what it is that we really want, like, what are we doing?

Jess Dewell 26:54
It can show up as fear. It can show up as avoidance. But I’m trying to think about all that spectrum of what makes us stop. I recently upped the amount of time I spend hiking for at least three and a half miles at a time. I remember being around 65 to 70% the way through early on, when I was like, Well, I’m gonna do this. It’s still once a week. I want to try and do this three times a week. I’m successful at doing this three times a week. Somewhere in there. It’s never the same. I get this really big just quit now. Or what are you doing out here? Or you don’t have time for this, or whatever it is. So I’m thinking about this in relationship to loneliness only because it’s a fear that I can relate to. I cannot relate to loneliness in this moment in my life. Can I in the past? Yes, but in this moment in my life, I’ve got a limiting belief that shows up if I am trying to do something new and overcome that, I have a lot of options. And if I’m lonely, I might have a lot of options. If I’m fearful, I might have a lot of options. But how do you actually take that first step? So that’s why I was bringing stuff because I’m like, I’m out in the middle of nowhere. I’m putting myself in a situation. I’ve got to keep going. To keep going. But if I wasn’t, and I was just in the city, I could call a list, right? I could call a car and have it come get me. I could be like, Sure, I’ve got the way out for that. And while that seems easy, that’s not necessarily always easy, right? That’s easy for me, but it might not be easy for you. So if we’re faced with something like this, where we’re in this place, we want to change how we’re living. We want to overcome a liberty. We want to change something that we know isn’t helping us even but we don’t know how to do it. What’s our first step?

Grace Gavin 28:34
I think the first step is realizing what is it costing you to not change? Or to make that easier decision, because I don’t think there’s such a thing as an easy decision, and maybe it feels easy, but the consequences are not. In your example of the hiking Sure, if you’re in the city, you could absolutely call a lift, but then what happens to your self-confidence?

Jess Dewell 28:59
I erode my self trust didn’t I? [Exactly.] I didn’t do what I said I was gonna do.

Grace Gavin 29:04
Maybe we’ve gotten comfortable in our fake relationships or just sustaining them on social media, but I want you to consider what is hard already, and I guarantee what’s hard already will make that hard choice of Stepping out and looking and seeking connection seem easy in comparison, that’s where I would start, is first realizing, what are you choosing right now that actually isn’t serving you? The next step is to go have a conversation with someone and say, Hey, here’s where I see our relationship right now. Ask them, where do they see the relationship? Maybe they have a completely different experience, or they’re not having these same thoughts or considerations, but they I guarantee they’ll think about it after that conversation. One of the practices we teach our clients is called the agreement. And so quite simply, the agreement is this simple, proven script, and it goes like this, will you agree with me on how we’re going to communicate? I want you to be 100% on. Promise, meaning be truly and freely yourself, speaking into what you want and how you feel. Promise I’ll be 100% open. I will listen without reservation. I’ll put my needs and wants on pause for you, and in return, I’ll be honest with you, and I ask that you be completely open to it. Do I have people that say, Wow, that would be weird to do. It would be hard to do. Yeah, absolutely be hard to do. I, as an open, honest expert, I’m using that daily the agreement, because I know the power of it. The first time you say it, it might feel weird, but you’re gonna have a discussion about, okay, what does that look like? What does that mean? And then coming back to it and modeling it, because what you’re really doing at the root of it is rewiring the way that this relationship operates. You are rewiring the way that your neural pathways interact when you come together with this person. If you want a real relationship out of it, I promise you, it will not be easy work, but it will be worth it, rather than just staying at that surface level and kind of just maintaining status-quo and not really getting anything out of the relationship. And so that’s a very practical way that we teach clients to start to have this conversation, to understand, okay, how do we do this differently? And then realizing that you can think about relationships, maybe as the foundation of a house or the foundation of a building, and taking the agreement and we’re chipping away. We’re not taking a bulldozer to it and knocking it down, because what all that does is make the foundation unsteady and just a huge mess of rubble. We’re chipping away at it and rebuilding. Every single time you have a conversation with that person, or you beat them for coffee, or you’re in your leadership team meetings, you are making an active choice to continue building that relationship towards being open and honest, rather than just evolving in back into that status quo where you’re not really connecting, you’re not having the conversations you need to push the business forward, because you don’t want to go into the conflict. And it seems scary every time you meet, you have a choice. Am I going to be open? Am I going to be honest here, or am I just gonna step away and not step into that?

Jess Dewell 32:07
I’m your host, Jess Dewell, and we’re getting down to business on the Bold Business Podcast. This is where we’re tackling the challenges that matter most to you with actionable and achievable advice to get real results that lead to your success.

ANNOUNCER 32:17
Did you know of those of us with a plan? 10% just have an idea. 75% have written but don’t use their plan. And 15% successfully achieve what is in their plan. Know exactly where you are and what is the necessary work to get where you want to go with a growth mindset reset. This is dedicated time to evaluate exactly where your business is, where you want it to go, and the trajectory you are currently on. Go to reddirection.com/solutions to get started.

Jess Dewell 32:51
So one of my mentors, Susan Mackey, developed a way to create a personal safety net, and today I think about it, and every once in a while, you hear these stories like borrowing salt from the neighbor. Why are you borrowing salt for the neighbor when we have that? Because they have that to give, and we want to be able to be there if they need something from us, right? That’s actually a story that has stuck with me for a long time, and it reminds me of this concept of this personal safety net that we used to have because we couldn’t just call a car if we decided to stop taking walk in the middle of a city and eroding our self-trust. We couldn’t do that. We had to do something else. If we got a flat tire on the way to work, who could come pick us up so that we could go get there or get us to a bus stop. Who can we borrow eggs from? Who can we call if something were to happen and we needed somebody to be with a person we’re responsible for while we ran and did something else unexpected, those are but what about everyday things? My shovel broke and it’s the middle of winter and I’ve got to get out of my garage. Who can I call? Do I have a good relationship to be able to have a conversation with a teacher or a peer, and that’s just every day to get to the life that you’re talking about here at the office when we’re talking about leadership, which is the same kind of stuff, it’s easy to be able to stay on the surface these days. We don’t have to go far. We have so much coming at us. There’s so much to filter out. There is no reason for a lot of people to do that extra work yet. I heard you say earlier, it comes at a cost, and that cost we might not see it at first, but it happens over time, and if we don’t have a peer network at the office to go, Hey, can you cover for me? Hey, I bit of seed wrong, and I have to go to the dentist right now. Can you go to this meeting for me and somebody being having that honest, open relationship that somebody go, oh, wow, that took a lot to ask for you, who likes to be there and do everything would usually power through having a broken tooth instead of going to the dentist for this meeting. Maybe I can do that for you. I. Well, we don’t know if we don’t take the time. Absolutely, that was a lot of stuff I just threw out there, but it’s so much that came up all at once, and it feels like it underlines what we’re seeing and experiencing in our world today. Because we don’t need to have the same kind of safety net that maybe we did 20 years ago because of whatever reason

Grace Gavin 35:34
It is possible, in this day and age, for somebody to never have to leave their house, because you can get your groceries delivered. You could have somebody come mow your lawn so you don’t have to go outside. You can work from home. And there are certain flexibilities and advantages that have happened because of that in our world, which I think is great, but anything taken to an extreme is detrimental. Because we are social creatures. We need interaction. We need connection to survive and to live a healthy and fulfilling life. We’ve quote, unquote, hit the easy button in that way of, oh, we’ll have this delivered, and I don’t have to do this. So if I want some connection, I’ll scroll on social media and get to know what is happening in people’s lives, but not ever actually have to have a conversation with them. I just see, Oh, they got a new promotion. I’ll tell them congrats, and it’ll be great. And don’t we have such a relationship there. But it’s not real. It’s not real. Instead of meeting with them or having a conversation with understanding, oh, it actually took a lot of work to get that promotion, or whatever it is, we can lead lives now more than ever that are completely disconnected, while saying we are more connected than ever because of all of the social media and all the ways we interact on the internet, which is beautiful, like you and I are having this conversation right now because of that, and it has made it a possibility. But sometimes we don’t use it in that way, and we use it to shy away from people, almost as if it’s become dangerous to get to know another person. And it is. It’s scary. I’ll give you that. It’s scary to let somebody else know you, and to be known by somebody else and to know somebody else because you’re putting some risk into that relationship, anything could happen. You could decide tomorrow that we’re not friends anymore, and maybe that would hurt. But isn’t it better for having had that friendship for a day than to have never had it in my book?

Jess Dewell 37:29
Yes, and I believe in the power you’re right. Without this, I’d still just be having really cool phone conversations and telling 25 people I know and hope they tell somebody else. That’s how I would still be getting information out if we didn’t have something like a podcast platform to have a conversation and to be able to show up and to be able to ask questions that might be unexpected, or to go, Hey, here’s this left field thing. Or, by the way something way out in the solar system might make sense here for what we’re talking about. It is something that is different. And you said conscious choice earlier. I appreciate those two words, and I love them together. Conscious choice and relationship is never easy. It’s it’s not easy. It’s not easy when we bring in another being like furry, feathered, scaly, two-legged or four-legged-being that we become responsible for in our lives, let alone other people. Whether we have a direct responsibility, a chosen responsibility, or a duty responsibility, however, people choose to look at that and being able to go, Okay, here’s what I don’t like about it, here’s what I do like about it. And how can I take what I like, and how can I take the potential of even more depth to determine if I actually like it more or a little less, or it’s even more surprising in a curious kind of way. I’m thinking that happens when it’s time to take care of your parents, if you are blessed, and I’ll also say cursed, because everybody will have a phrase, there’ll be a spectrum of that, to be able to be with somebody in that next life change of your parents going through retirement, your parents giving up their home, you’re being responsible to make sure They have what they need because of their age, were health, right? And I think there’s a lot of curiosity we could bring. I brought up parents specifically because it doesn’t matter our age, our parents can be a point of contention. Our parents can bring out the best of us at 13, at 23 and at whatever age we might be today.

Grace Gavin 39:31
And it makes me think about my own journey with my dad because we walked him through a cancer journey, and it was only five months long, but that was the hardest time thinking about past self and rewriting. That was also a bit of a blessing because my dad was a really stubborn, confident that he is going to get what he wants, type of guy. And I think I get some of that, of what I have from him thinking about that. And so it’s a great mirror of, Wow, that’s really frustrating. And now looking at myself like, Oh, I understand how I’m frustrating to people, but. Regardless of that, looking at there was an option there to step away from that and to not get into the heart of it, absolutely. And it was really hard, but I think it would have been harder now, if I hadn’t done that, and we didn’t even do that to the full extent. And so there’s a lot of stories on why I come to the work of this. But for me, the biggest, loudest heart of it, is through this cancer journey. When he went in July of 2020 like chaos of 2020 that it was and then we found out he had stage four small cell carcinoma, a really aggressive form of cancer, and he was gonna fight. It is what. He decided he was a fighter. He was stubborn, so he started chemo in the hospital. We left after 12 days, and went through taking all the medications and the pills, and we I just watched. And we watched as this just once strong, stubborn, opinionated man just withered away in front of us, and we never talked about and we were never honest about the odds of survival. The odds were 3% and I say this as this is my own failing of having an honest conversations my family and understanding that. Because I didn’t, I’ll tell you. Jess, I didn’t even look up that stat. I didn’t want to know. My sister shared it with me. My sister rose I remember her saying the odds are 3% and I remember thinking to myself, what are we doing? What are we doing going through all of this, instead of being maybe more intentional about the time that we have, I think about asking stories. And my dad was a farmer, and he grew our farm from 80 acres to 450 I’m sure he had some really great entrepreneurial ideas and stories to share with me, but I never asked because we got so focused on what was quote-unquote easy in fighting the cancer, which was really hard. We didn’t do the actual hard thing of admitting that and looking at what could we have done that would have been really meaningful in the last five months of his life, and I don’t ever get to do that over again. I hope in sharing that, maybe that unlocks something for somebody listening today, whether they’re going through a cancer journey, or whether they’re going through a really tough time with their team, and they’re deciding to hold back, to not be honest, to have that hard conversation. I promise you that if you look back on that, you will be grateful you had the tough conversation rather than avoiding that. I say that because I went through that and I avoided the hard conversation, and I regret it. I don’t want that to be for anybody else. I think about that when I’m working with clients, when I’m talking with individuals, and what are the hard conversations that will actually make your life better? Will make your life, quote, unquote, easier after having gone through that hard thing. I think about it all the time.

Jess Dewell 43:04
What makes it bold to embrace your real, raw self?

Grace Gavin 43:09
I think what makes it bold is that it’s unfortunately counter-cultural right now this entire conversation, what we’re talking about is hitting that easy button, avoiding the hard conversations, but to actually do that and get to the experience on the other side, which will be far greater, you have to be bold in that you have to be willing to say the thing out loud, to be honest, and on the other side of that, you Have to be bold enough to be open to what somebody else is saying, and that doesn’t mean that you have to agree with them. I have conversations with people all the time that I don’t agree with them, but I have to be bold enough to be open to hear what they’re saying. And when I hear what they’re saying, sometimes it does change my perspective and sometimes it doesn’t, but at least I understand them better, and I understand where they’re coming from better. And that can feel really scary if we’re not steady in ourselves, if we are not standing as we truly and freely are, if we don’t have confidence in where we have come from and what we have learned, that can feel scary. And so that is bold. I think it’s bold on both sides, to be honest, but also to be open and to really what does it look like to listen to somebody to put my needs and wants on pause, because we are not being taught that right now in our world.

Jess Dewell 44:24
Every single time I have a conversation, I take away something that I want to share with 25 people I know when you’re listening to this podcast, you’re also listening for that, and we’ll have something that you want to share in the comments. I would like for you to engage with us. What is that thing that you want to tell 25 people from this program? Here’s why it’s important. It’s important because, yeah, there are going to be how-tos, yes, there are going to be steps. Yes, you’re gonna be like, Oh, I wish I wrote that down. I wish I wasn’t doing this and I could actually take action on that right now. But guess what? You’re not so engaged right now because that one thing you want to share with others will be the thing that you can figure out how to incorporate in your business, in your workflow, in your style.

ANNOUNCER 45:02
Jess hosts the Bold Business Podcast to provide insights for building a resilient, profitable business by deeply understanding your growth strategy, ensuring market relevance and your company’s future. It is bold to deeply understand your growth strategy with your host, Jess Dewell, get more information about how to drive solutions and reset your growth mindset at Re direction.com. Thank you for joining us, and special thanks to our post-production team at The Scott Treatment.