So, Here's My Story...
236 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 2 years ago - ★★★★★ - 38 ratingsSo, Here's My Story... is the only business podcast that promises wildly useful lessons from the absurd, the poignant and the seemingly irrelevant. This project arose out of a burning hatred of bullet point blogs, canned solutions and highlight-reel business conversations that look nothing like the realities of leadership. Business is messy and unpredictable. Business has depth and nuance. Business is more than spreadsheets. Business is stories.
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Episodes
Ep227: Our Final Story
October 26, 2021 09:00 - 34 minutes - 31.5 MBIt’s our final episode, and we have a lot to say, including thank you so much for listening! Why is that important for business? We are sad (and grateful and excited and…) to announce this is our final episode. As we reminisce about some of our favourite memories – including our live event and the Stalking Face Cake – we also want to impart some final lessons from our decision to end the podcast here. And obviously, we want to thank everyone for listening and supporting us since we star...
Ep 226: Organizational Depressive State
October 19, 2021 09:00 - 27 minutes - 25.8 MBIs your business in a rut? Is everyone showing up with “Non-Player Characters” energy? When you have an Organizational Depressive State, it can be hard to get out of it – or can it be as simple as one person, one change? Let’s discuss! Why is that important for business? When you walk into a business and feel like your life force begins to immediately drain – like everyone is walking around with NPC (Non-Player Character) energy, it can feel like it’s impossible (or at least exhausting)...
Ep225: Hoarding and Hermione
October 12, 2021 09:00 - 27 minutes - 25.1 MBHow do you strike the balance between keeping things that you might not ever need, and getting rid of things that you might regret not having? Why is that important for business? Having exactly what you need but nothing extra is a Nirvana that few can ever attain. It might show up in the amount of stuff you have, in your processes, or even in your systems. Even space can be hoarded – there is something about having more space that is associated with success, and something about do...
Ep224: Do You Expect to Be Heard?
October 05, 2021 09:00 - 27 minutes - 25.4 MBDo you expect to be heard? Or do you just assume that how things are is how they have to be? Why is that important for business? Do you have a say or a voice? Do you expect to be heard? If your whole experience in life is being heard, then it is more likely that is your expectation. If you are systematically and systemically overlooked, it doesn’t build the confidence to speak with authority about things. Where can you start using your voice where you currently think you have no powe...
Ep223: Tight Glutes & Communicating Needs
September 28, 2021 09:00 - 25 minutes - 23.1 MBLike all good lessons about asking for what you need in business, this lesson starts in a massage parlor. Why is that important for business? You need to be aware of your needs (in business and in life) and communicate them effectively. Sometimes, when you are staring at a blank page, you just need to figure out what the first sentence should be and start from there. There is nothing about work and leading that doesn’t involve identifying what is needed and asking for what is needed...
Ep222: Wrestling with Adversity
September 21, 2021 09:00 - 21 minutes - 19.9 MBWhen you find out you are riding with the descendent of a nationally acclaimed blind wrestler, you know you’re in for some stories. And it turns out, we can turn those stories into some business lessons! Why is that important for business? There are interesting challenges to being blind when pursuing a sport like wrestling – it can be harder to see what’s coming, but you become very skilled at dealing with what’s in front of you. An honest understanding of your strengths and weaknesses,...
Ep221: Replay - The Art of Finishing Well
September 14, 2021 09:00 - 34 minutes - 32.6 MBWe don't talk about endings enough, especially not ending things well, with as much celebration as we began them. And that is exactly what this episode is about. Why is that important for business? Consider ending your business, or a product line, or even a relationship with a client or a team member – are you putting in the same effort to make a beautiful ending as you did when you started? Instead of ending by tapering off into a fizzling nothingness, celebrate everything that was; en...
Ep220: Diversity of Thought vs. Culture
September 07, 2021 09:00 - 23 minutes - 21.9 MBWhether it’s politics, sports or happy hour, sometimes your company culture can make others feel uncomfortable. At what point do you make changes to include people, and at what point is that watering down an important aspect of your culture? Why is that important for business? In the office, sometimes cultures develop that can be polarizing. How do you handle it when new people come into conflict with the existing culture? How does diversity of thought and perspective reconcile with not...
Ep219: Board Games & Company Culture
August 31, 2021 09:00 - 26 minutes - 24.4 MBYour company culture, a new board game, and all the ways they relate. Why is that important for business? A new board game allows people to make choices that would benefit everyone. And more people were interested in taking that choice – to advance the game for everyone – instead of just progressing closer to the ultimate goal of winning. People who played the game chose collaboration over playing simply for the objective of winning. Which makes us think about company culture. What ...
Ep218: Little Decisions Lead to Big Culture
August 24, 2021 09:00 - 25 minutes - 23.2 MBCulture – whether in your business or in your family – isn’t just established in big picture planning. It is established in the little decisions that you make all the time about what’s important to you in the moment. Why is that important for business? Sometimes in business, we make lists of our values and try to establish a culture around that. But often it is the small moments – where we have to make decisions about what really matters in that moment – that create culture. What you p...
Ep217: Languishing Between Gears
August 17, 2021 09:00 - 28 minutes - 26.3 MBFeel like you’re languishing right now in these uncertain times? Let’s talk about reframing that experience a bit. Why is that important for business? There is a lot of uncertainty in the world and in business right now – lots of things are changing and many people feel unsettled and unmoored, or even like they are languishing. A recent episode of Hidden Brain, featuring Anthony Burrow, focused on this experience: “A lot of the identity contingencies – the way in which we think o...
Ep216: A Taste of Community
August 10, 2021 09:00 - 25 minutes - 24 MBThere are a lot of logistics to consider in coming back to work, but one thing you might not be thinking about is the change to community. Does community still matter, and how will it look different in a post-COVID world? Why is that important for business? There are ripple effects to this isolation. The next phase of business evolution, post-COVID, will look different in terms of building community, and it’s worth considering what that will look like. We have been talking policy, but w...
Ep215: Practice, Risk & The Necessity of Failure
August 03, 2021 09:00 - 26 minutes - 25 MBWhat if trying new things was like football training camp, and you had an audience – and even media – present while you were trying to figure things out? Wish you had time to practice something new in private instead? Maybe it’s not as simple as one or the other. Why is that important for business? To be successful in business, we need to give people the freedom to try and fail and evolve. And it would be nice to be able to do that in private. But there is also the danger that you can ...
Ep214: Pushing Through
July 27, 2021 09:00 - 21 minutes - 19.6 MBEver have to muster the energy to do something you don’t want to do, but really should do? How do you change your energy? And how do you know when it’s a losing battle? Why is that important for business? What do you do when things just are not working? How far do you push a lack of energy? Sometimes, when you have to make it work, changing your environment can totally shift your energy – it’s like layering other colours into the fabric. You can also change the rules to match the e...
Ep213: Replay - Hijacked Meetings
July 20, 2021 09:00 - 28 minutes - 26.3 MBREPLAY OF EPISODE 75: Audience Q&As can quickly devolve. Someone wants to share a story instead of a question; someone else wants to demonstrate their own expertise and “teach from the seats”. No one seems to know how to ask a succinct and relevant question and you can feel the frustration from the group. As the leader – whether it be in front of a large audience or just at your staff meetings – you must consider the impact of these contributions on the room, and your goals. This episode ...
Ep212: Indecision & PREgrets
July 13, 2021 09:00 - 28 minutes - 25.8 MBHave you ever found yourself saying “I’m going to regret this”, but doing it anyway? Let’s talk self-sabotage and the frustrating world of pregrets. Why is that important for business? Often, we think too much about the consequences of making a bad decision, and not nearly enough about the consequences of making no decision. The decisions made through indecision/lack of a decision have consequences that we often ignore – sometimes they set a precedent, or simply waste a lot of time and...
Ep211: Taxicab Lights & Opportunities
July 06, 2021 09:00 - 23 minutes - 21.8 MBOpportunities, luck, and leaving room in your business life for what you actually enjoy – just a few of the things we need to talk about in this episode. Why is that important for business? “I skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.” Wayne Gretzky Luck is not a cloud of magic that you walk into. Luck is opportunities realizing they are standing in the same room together. If you want to do something different than what you are doing, you have to let other people know ...
Ep210: Confidence & the Truest Expression of You
June 29, 2021 09:00 - 26 minutes - 24.4 MBCan you build confidence directly, or do you have to come at it obliquely, through just being yourself? Let’s discuss. Why is that important for business? People often think of confidence in terms of external validation, but if that’s the case, it can easily be cannibalized because you get worried how people will react. But what if the most confident thing you can do is just be you? This can look like put on a “CEO posture”, where you are filtering the perception of confidence through...
Ep209: Employee Engagement & You
June 22, 2021 09:00Where does your responsibility to keep your employees end, and their responsibility to speak up start? Let’s sort that out in the next 20 minutes or so! Why is that important for business? Trying to help an employee who seems unenthused find their spark for work can be important to help retain your staff. But maybe it’s not your job to fix something without even knowing if work is the problem. Reading other people’s energy is a skillset, but at some point, you have to trust the perso...
Ep209: Employee Engagement & You
June 22, 2021 09:00 - 26 minutes - 24.7 MBWhere does your responsibility to keep your employees end, and their responsibility to speak up start? Let’s sort that out in the next 20 minutes or so! Why is that important for business? Trying to help an employee who seems unenthused find their spark for work can be important to help retain your staff. But maybe it’s not your job to fix something without even knowing if work is the problem. Reading other people’s energy is a skillset, but at some point, you have to trust the perso...
Ep208: Apologies Per Hour
June 15, 2021 09:00 - 28 minutes - 26.6 MBThis is a rant about a bad experience at the bank, but it also ends up being an important lesson about a metric you’ve probably never heard about: apologies per hour. Why is that important for business? An interesting metric for a business to consider is how many apologies your people are issuing per hour. If you have that many apologies to make, then there’s a big problem. It’s demoralizing for your team, and probably indicates you have prioritized something else over customer care. ...
Ep207: On(board)gaming
June 08, 2021 09:00 - 25 minutes - 23.8 MBLearning a new board game can be frustrating – it’s a lot of information to learn without any real context. And it might also reveal a lot about things in your business, like onboarding staff. Why is that important for business? Just as it is with learning how to do a new job, learning a new board game can mean a lot of new information that doesn’t have a lot of contextual meaning. But what if you change how you learn a new board game – a brief summary of the rules and goals of the game...
Ep206: Country Clubs & Company Culture
June 01, 2021 09:00 - 30 minutes - 28.2 MBWhen you get a chance to be among random groups of strangers, it can quickly become clear that there are always commonalities that bind us. And we can learn a lot about company culture by observing our common needs and behaviors. Why is that important for business? Experiencing the commonality of what everyone is going through can be very reassuring. It’s also what makes up company culture. Culture isn’t organized, catalyzed or sparked by a mission statement or a team building meeting....
Ep205: Leadership & Responsibility During COVID
May 25, 2021 09:00 - 32 minutes - 29.7 MBLeadership means making decisions for your company and everyone in it. And sometimes, especially when it comes to things like COVID and health, those decisions are extra challenging. Why is that important for business? When it comes to coming back to the office, there are more variables than ever to consider – who can work remotely, do you wear masks, is everyone vaccinated are just some of the more complicated problems leaders are dealing with right now. When you are in charge of a...
Ep204: Pastries and Perseverance
May 18, 2021 09:00 - 27 minutes - 25.6 MBWhat can we learn from a software used to ring up pastries, that ends up helping with cancer treatment? If this episode is any indication, a lot. Why is that important for business? In Tokyo, a pastry shop in a train station wanted to make it easier to ring up pastries without packaging. And it led to a big development in cancer treatment (you can read the story here). So what can we learn from this? There are lessons about perseverance. About connecting your people, culture, and...
Ep203: The Sombrero on the Wall
May 11, 2021 09:00 - 27 minutes - 25.1 MBHave you ever thought you nailed an interview – maybe even had a standing ovation-level interview – but still ended up in second place? Maybe went out and celebrated and got yourself a giant celebratory hat? Let’s talk about that hat, and what it symbolizes. Why is that important for business? There is a critical excitement you feel at the beginning of a journey whose end is uncertain. Everyone is susceptible to that energy and even need to feed off of it sometimes. As an entrepreneur,...
Ep202: Never-Ending Not Change
May 04, 2021 09:00 - 25 minutes - 23.6 MBYou can learn a lot about how to handle change (and seemingly never-ending not change) by taking two 20-hour train rides. Or you can just listen to Jodi’s story instead. Why is that important for business? Things feel like they are on the cusp of some sort of return to “normalcy”, in business and in life (as we talked about in episode 199, The Next New Normal). And we all have to sort through the stack of things that have changed because of COVID and consider what we are excited to br...
Ep201: The Importance of Culture
April 27, 2021 09:00 - 28 minutes - 25.9 MBEver struggle between what’s best for your client, and what’s best for the culture of your organization? Both are critical to your long-term success, so let’s talk about how to navigate those decisions. Why is that important for business? In your business, you have to take the long view. Culture works on trust, and if you allow bad behaviour among your team, you can be indicating that clients are more important than culture. As a leader, this is the balance you have to navigate. You...
Ep200: Business Lessons from Scammers
April 20, 2021 09:00 - 27 minutes - 25.4 MBHave you ever thought about a scammer, “you are very bad at your job?” What if, instead, it’s an issue of leadership at Scam Headquarters? What if scammers could use business coaches too? Why is that important for business? A scam is essentially a business, and because of this, flawed leadership and personnel issues can plague them just as they can your business. Some even have customer service lines to help you process your extortion payments or send fruit baskets for participating. S...
Ep199: The Next New Normal
April 13, 2021 09:00 - 28 minutes - 26.4 MBWhat are you excited to return to, post-pandemic, and what parts do you plan to bring into your “new normal”? Sometimes, a meme can spark some really interesting conversations. Why is that important for business? We didn’t get a lot of choice when this pandemic hit – we had to adapt, and we had to adapt fast. And now, as it finally feels like we might get some semblance of “normal” back, there are a lot of things we are excited about doing again. But there are also things we have exper...
Ep198: Replay - In Sickness and In Health
April 06, 2021 09:00 - 29 minutes - 27.5 MBREPLAY OF EPISODE 69: When illness befell the Hume household, Jodi learned an important lesson about empathy, and how bad we can be at empathizing if we haven’t experienced something for ourselves. It turns out, empathy involves more than emotional intelligence. Why is that important for business? So often in business, we jump to conclusions about the motivations, experiences and decisions of others. Sometimes, this lack of empathy is a matter of needing to develop some emotional intell...
Ep197: You-Shaped Feedback
March 30, 2021 09:00 - 28 minutes - 25.9 MBHow do you pick a mentor? What is necessary to being a good mentor? And do you still need a Sherpa if you have already summited the mountain? Why is that important for business? Mentors or NA sponsors are something that successful people use to succeed in business and sobriety. But once you’ve “made it”, do you still need on? A mentor isn’t someone that gives you the answers. A good mentor or sponsor is there to help you avoid falling into your usual traps, and keep you focused on th...
Ep196: Training Your People to Fetch Pillows
March 23, 2021 09:00 - 28 minutes - 26.3 MBIt turns out, you can train a dog to stop barking if you train him to retrieve throw cushions instead. Let’s find out how that trick can work with humans. Why is that important for business? When you see a behaviour you don’t like – barking at the door, for instance – you may have better luck stopping it by introducing a new replacement behaviour – fetching pillows - than by focusing on the barking. It can be much more effective to train a dog to do something instead of training them no...
Ep195: Brakes vs. Breaks
March 16, 2021 09:00 - 26 minutes - 24.1 MBA lot of car ads discuss the importance of going from zero to 100, but rarely they talk about how well they go from 100 to zero. And it turns out, neither do businesses. Why is that important for business? Business owners focus a lot on growth, scalability and everything to do with speed, power and velocity. But safety, or measured initiatives, aren’t as sexy. Sometimes, to go fast, you need to build your brakes up so you don’t spin out on the curves. Braking is an art in and of its...
Ep194: Verve & Business Opportunities
March 09, 2021 10:00 - 25 minutes - 24.7 MBWhen you see a business opportunity, it’s natural to focus on the potential return on investment, and the consequences if it doesn’t work. But it’s important to remember another key question: what happens if it does work? Why is that important for business? When examining a business opportunity, we need to look at what happens if it fails, but also, what happens if succeeds. If you were to imagine yourself celebrating everything working out from the opportunity exactly as designed, woul...
Ep193: Actionable Clarity
March 02, 2021 10:00 - 26 minutes - 24.4 MBOverwhelmed with all the plates you have to keep spinning as an entrepreneur? It might be time to examine some of those plates and see which ones you don’t actually need to be spinning. Why is that important for business? In business, you have a lot of decisions and things you need to be aware of, and all of them have a weight. But sometimes, you are worrying about things further down the decision tree that won’t actually come up if you make some of the more pressing decisions. It can ...
Ep192: Expectations & Insulin
February 23, 2021 10:00 - 30 minutes - 27.9 MBWhether you are responding to a college applicant or your insulin-dependent wife, sometimes it can be a thin line between building expectations and letting them build expectations in a vacuum. Why is that important for business? There are many times in business where you are going to be confronted with your own and your client’s uncertainty. And while it is usually important to share what you know early (and be okay not knowing much), you also don’t want to set people up for disappoint...
Ep191: Am I Getting Warmer?
February 16, 2021 10:00 - 26 minutes - 25.2 MBFeedback is important, even (maybe even especially) if it is negative. But in the absence of something that tells you when you are getting warmer, it can be hard to find the right path. Why is that important for business? In business, whether it is among work colleagues, employers or clients, you need help to understand how to do a good job. If you only ever get expressions of dissatisfaction, without any inkling of what is working, it can make it nearly impossible to meet expectations....
Ep190: Protecting Your Referral Cred
February 09, 2021 10:00 - 26 minutes - 24.4 MBReferrals – they’re the lifeblood of business, so they say. But how do you make sure you keep your referral cred (much like street cred, but with referrals) when you can’t assess the quality of the work of the person to whom you are referring? Why is that important for business? When you are referring out, it is usually because that is not your area of expertise. So how do you know the person is good? Making a referral is about trust. You have to assess whether you believe them to b...
Ep189: Overwhelm and the Stomp
February 02, 2021 10:00 - 28 minutes - 26.3 MBBusiness and life are full of moments of overwhelm and disorientation. And in those moments, we need to take a moment to identify what works to help us locate some grounding. We need to find our stomp, or our spit. Why is that important for business? We’ve all found ourselves spinning in circles, not knowing which way was up. Like if you are caught in an avalanche, the thing you need to do before you do anything else is orient yourself. And sometimes, that means spitting to find out wh...
Ep188: When The Home Office Isn't Working
January 26, 2021 10:00 - 28 minutes - 26 MBHow do you delineate when work ends and home life begins when both happen in the same space? Why is that important for business? There is something important to many people about the distinctions between work and home life, whether it be the commute (as we talked about in this previous episode) or having an office outside of the home. Having a physical or at least psychological separation between the two can be important. You need a work place, not just a place of work. Having a dis...
Ep187: Your Gut vs The Data
January 19, 2021 10:00 - 27 minutes - 25.1 MBDo you ever get data that has historically proven accurate and helpful, but just ignored it because…you wanted to? How do you determine when to listen to recommendations, and when to follow your intuition? Why is that important for business? Business owners get a lot of information, and it can sometimes be interesting to simply say, “that’s interesting” and move on. But when we put effort into getting reliable metrics and then continuously ignore them, it might require closer inspection...
Ep186: Rules, Guardrails and...Kevin
January 12, 2021 10:00 - 33 minutes - 30.9 MBHow do you balance too many rules with too few? How about exceptions? And where do you fall on Methodists and Evil Kevin? Let’s talk about all of that (and more!) Why is that important for business? It is easy to overdo or underdo rules and regulations. It is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that your team does not need rules because they can be trusted. But your team won’t always be the same, both because situations in their lives will change, and your team will change over time....
Ep 185: Generational Superpowers
January 05, 2021 10:00 - 28 minutes - 26.4 MBIs there a generational divide in your business or place of work? Leaning into the differences – and the superpowers – of each generation can make your business stronger. For instance, how can you exploit the Gen X superpower of tolerating boredom? Let’s talk about that. Why is that important for business? Usually, we give a little too much credence and attention to the differences between the generations. But there are differences. In business especially, those differences can actuall...
Ep184: Entrepreneurs Can’t Get No Satisfaction
December 29, 2020 10:00 - 24 minutes - 23.1 MBBilly Joel and Hamilton sang about it, but what is your relationship with satisfaction? How can entrepreneurs, with their knack for always striving, develop a relationship with satisfaction, and is it even important to do that? Why is that important for business? Is there an incompatibility with entrepreneurship/business leadership and being satisfied? Is it a cardinal sin to say, “yeah I’m good”, or is that foolish? Satisfaction lives on a spectrum, and even if it might not be neces...
Ep183: The Garbage Bag Full of Salad & Working Remotely
December 22, 2020 10:00 - 23 minutes - 21.5 MBEver been so focused on the planning that you don’t take into account the delivery method? Ah, the lessons we learn from a garbage bag full of salad, lobster-chip cookies, and acres of pizza. Why is that important for business? This issue – considering the delivery method – has come up a lot in business in 2020, largely because of remote working. When you have a way of doing something – launching a strategic plan before a holiday party, when everyone is together, for instance – and you...
Ep182: Success Mindset & Quarantine Shaming
December 15, 2020 10:00 - 27 minutes - 25 MBThere is a big difference between how the haves and the have nots think and talk about money, access and resources. Those differences show up in your business, too, and we should talk about it. Why is that important for business? Just as rich people teach their kids different things about money than poor and middle-class parents, so to do these differences show up in businesses, especially in management teams and start-ups. There is a difference between approach and culture, and mindse...
Ep181: Tell Me The Truth
December 08, 2020 10:00 - 25 minutes - 23.4 MB“Tell me the truth” – are there any four words more fraught with potential discord than those? But if someone asks you a “tell me the truth” question, it’s important to consider that might not be the question you should be answering at all. Why is that important for business? If someone asks you a “tell me the truth” question in business, there is the potential to do a lot of damage, regardless how you answer. But almost always, there is an opportunity to ask more questions and gain ...
Ep180: The Value of Suffering
December 01, 2020 10:00 - 27 minutes - 25.6 MBIf you’ve ever seen a debate about student loan forgiveness, then you’ve heard some version of, “I had to pay my loan back, so should they.” But at what point does “fairness” become lack of leadership, and focusing on individuals cripple a system? Why is that important for business? To be successful, companies have to be nimble and not beholden to the past. At the same time, we have to be careful not to blithely dismiss or alienate those who have concerns – is there merit in the process...
Ep179: Bonuses in a Bad Year
November 24, 2020 10:00 - 27 minutes - 25.2 MBFor a lot of companies, bonus season is coming up. Because this has been an especially strange year, it feels extra challenging to balance the desire to show your people they are valued, while still being responsible to the future needs of your business in uncertain times. Essentially, this episode is all about helping Eliot make decisions, but we get to come along for the ride. Why is that important for business? Considering how strange and unprecedented the events of 2020 have been,...