RHS 188 - Embracing Neurodiversity: Kimi Donahue's Journey to Success and Effective Communication
Discover her inspiring journey in the insurance industry and how her passion for connecting with others through music has played a role in her success.
Kimi opens up about living with Tourette's and its impact on her communication skills. We delve into the importance of understanding neurodiversity, providing feedback, and exploring the potential dangers of falling into a victim mentality.
Learn how to better communicate with neurodivergent individuals and foster an environment of understanding and acceptance.
Finally, listen as Kimi and I discuss respect, freedom, and relationship communication. We explore the power of respectful differentiation, personal agency, and improvement.
Hear how striving for excellence can help you further develop your unique skills and talents. Don't miss this insightful and thought-provoking episode with the amazing Kimi Donahue!
Episode Highlights:
Kimmy shares her experience with Tourette Syndrome, including her diagnosis, symptoms, and how she copes with it. (8:17)
Kimi explains the importance of setting expectations and being open to communication styles. (15:35)
Kimi mentions that being open to feedback and learning from it can lead to better communication and understanding of different personalities. (25:26)
Kimi discusses the importance of respect in relationships, whether it be in the workplace or in a romantic relationship. (37:07)
Kimi explains how being different has become mainstream these days and how some people use it as a crutch to get shallow feedback and victories. (42:40)
Kimi mentions that she is always looking for new experiences and strives to be the best at them. (53:58)
Key Quotes:
“I've just been really lucky or have done a good job of surrounding myself with people that are similar, that are just very growth minded. That's what I mean by learning basis is people that understand that, like, there's always room for improvement. And your perspective isn't always the only one that exists. And I think that's probably the biggest piece that my parents really helped drive home for me and my sister.” - Kimi Donahue
“I'm always looking for something new. And then of course, when I do it, I want to be the best I can be at it. That's hence, where the competitive nature comes in. You know, I enjoy recognition, I enjoy being a winner.” - Kimi Donahue
Resources Mentioned:
Kimi Donahue LinkedIn
Openly
Reach out to Ryan Hanley
Rogue Risk
Finding Peak
Press play and read along
Transcript
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Speaker 7 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.
Speaker 8 Hello everyone and welcome back to the show.
Speaker 9
Today we have a tremendous episode for you, a conversation with Kimmy Donahue, a senior agency success manager at Openly. But Kimmy is so much more.
And if you follow on LinkedIn, then you know that.
Speaker 9 uh what i what i love is in her linkedin bio it starts with insurtech sure but then revenue rocker making businesses sing i think it's absolutely phenomenal and uh kimmy is one of a kind uh we hadn't had a chance to talk long form yet like we did in this podcast and it was wonderful she had reached out to me actually after uh the episode that i had done a while ago about um the insurance hub and neurodivergent insurance professionals and what it means for our industry and we talked a lot about that we talked a lot about just
Speaker 9 insurance in general, business in general, life, a lot of amazing topics, incredible conversation,
Speaker 9 very open, very candid. And these are the kind of conversations that I do,
Speaker 9 like the reason I do the show. Like, we can talk tactics and strategy all day, but quite honestly, that stuff bores the hell out of me.
Speaker 9 Insurance and selling insurance is actually really easy. And if you make it hard, that's really a you problem.
Speaker 9 It is the emotional, relational, leadership, management,
Speaker 9 dealing with crises, communication. It is the soft skill stuff that either makes us a success or failure, not our ability to execute
Speaker 6 tactical
Speaker 9 activities. And
Speaker 9 conversations like this one are with Kimmy are exactly the reason that I do this show, and I'm so happy to bring it to you.
Speaker 9 If you love this show, guys, if you enjoy this show, please share the show.
Speaker 9 You know, social, text it to a friend, email to a friend, tell somebody at an event that you're at.
Speaker 9
You know, we continue to grow. We continue to have great conversations.
We continue to bring amazing people on with incredible stories, incredible insights.
Speaker 9 And I want to get those individuals as much exposure as we possibly can and expose more people to what we're doing here and just the way that we approach these topics, the way that we approach business and life.
Speaker 9 And if you want to help and want to push the show forward, would love that share.
Speaker 9 Also, if you're enjoying the show, then you'll love uh the writing that i'm doing on finding peak go to finding peak f-i-n-d-i-n-g-p-e-ak.com findingpeak.com as in finding peak performance and the whole concept is 10x ideas to build more freedom into our lives if we have freedom we can do great work we can grow our businesses we can grow our relationships we can take on side projects we can find you know kind of that dan sullivan idea of our unique ability and but we cannot do that without freedom if our life is packed if our brain is packed if we are under stress if we are under someone's thumb if we're under our own thumb which is often most likely the case then we cannot get there and finding peak is about that journey it's a journey that i'm on personally and i just share my own thoughts and feelings the research i do um the things that i try in my business life and my personal life um
Speaker 9
And I think you'll enjoy it. Go to Finding Peak.
It's free. Sign up, subscribe.
You get one email a week from me with stories and ideas.
Speaker 9 Guys, I just absolutely love the fact that you listen to this show. I try to put as much work into it as I can.
Speaker 9 Hopefully, you feel the heart and soul that comes through in every episode and how much I care about delivering value to you.
Speaker 9 And
Speaker 9
I just appreciate you for listening. Thank you so much.
All right, guys. With that, let's get on to Kimmy Donahue.
Speaker 9 What's up? Hey, how are you? Good.
Speaker 10 I am trying to, let's see here.
Speaker 10 Testing, testing.
Speaker 10 Can you hear my microphone?
Speaker 5
Yeah. You are.
Your microphone is emasculating me right now. So
Speaker 5 it's actually like my singing microphone.
Speaker 10 I'm like, ooh.
Speaker 5 Sounds awesome.
Speaker 6 Cool.
Speaker 10 Yay.
Speaker 5 Well, I'm excited to have me on the show.
Speaker 10
Likewise. Yeah.
This is a, well, you're not on my show. I'm on your show, but I'm super excited to talk about this stuff.
This is stuff I could talk about all day.
Speaker 5 So, yeah. And so I want to, I'd love to start with
Speaker 5 just in general for people, just a little bit of your origin story. You don't have to go too far back or just spend too much time on it because I don't want to.
Speaker 5 like I want to talk about other stuff, but yeah, I'd love to just, just a little bit of origin story for people who may not know or may not have heard you seen you doing your thing or follow you on LinkedIn or all the other places that you're creating.
Speaker 5 Just to give the audience a little backstory.
Speaker 10 Yeah. So I am Kimmy Donahue, currently agency success manager over at Openly.
Speaker 10 Prior to that, if we want to go all the way back, how I got into the insurance industry, it's like everybody just kind of fell into it, right?
Speaker 10 I was super interested in what it can do for people and started as a producer at a captive company, opened my own captive agency, went independent and actually exited from a partnership and joined openly.
Speaker 10 So that's my insurance origin story.
Speaker 10
A couple other things about me is I'm just one of those that loves to take action. So I'm involved in many projects.
I've got a lot of different hobbies.
Speaker 10 Music's one of them. Hence this cool microphone that I'm really struggling to get like to stay in the picture because of that virtual background stuff, you know? But anyway.
Speaker 5 The good news is I don't produce the video, so it doesn't matter. Oh, cool.
Speaker 10
Even better. So no one will actually see what's happening on here.
Then I won't care. I'll face it more towards me.
So it sounds better.
Speaker 5 Well, so what happened was, and I know this wouldn't be a problem from you because you're, you're just comfortable being in front of people.
Speaker 5
But what I find is when I produce the video, people get really weird. Oh, right.
And yes, yeah. Like we could have these open, honest, you know.
Speaker 5 conversations that are dynamic and all over the board, which is why I do the show and what I love about it.
Speaker 5 And if I tell them I'm recording the video, I'm going to put it on YouTube, I will get these square conversations where people, people, and I don't know what it is.
Speaker 5 I'm like, you know, that people can hear the words on Apple podcasts, right? And they're like, but if you can see their face, they're like, they completely changed.
Speaker 10 So I just interesting.
Speaker 5 Yes. For that reason, I would love to do a video show,
Speaker 5 but I feel like it really has to be in person.
Speaker 5 Like, you know, I think that. uh when you produce the video i think the audio is different for some people i think people
Speaker 5 it doesn't feel like you're talking to thousands of people when it's just audio.
Speaker 5 But when you know the video is being produced, people all of a sudden they have to look right and they have to sit right. And they're like, and I'm like, you know, so it just changes everything.
Speaker 5 So I just stopped producing a video a long time ago.
Speaker 10
Interesting. No, that'd be a really cool case study to run with and see, you know, what kind of different conversations you have, you know, with all of that.
Yeah. That is very interesting.
Huh?
Speaker 5 I didn't mean to interrupt you. So, so no, but no, that's okay.
Speaker 10 That's going to happen this whole show, probably, which I'm totally okay with and get. But yes, this is
Speaker 10
probably why I'm okay with being on video. Is I've I'm on stage.
I sing when I'm not doing insurance-related things.
Speaker 10 And prior to that, I was always in different kinds of competitive sports, whether it was motorcycle racing.
Speaker 10 I was involved in competitive shooting as well. So things like three-gun.
Speaker 10 And even, you know, you go all the way back to my childhood. I was captain of my high school bowling team, you know, and not really something you always go out and say, hey, guess what I did?
Speaker 10 But I loved bowling.
Speaker 10 So it was just always very competitive. And going way back, because I know that the reason that we wanted to chat was you had a post about neurodiversity and ADHD.
Speaker 10
So this is really where it gets interesting. So back in fourth grade, I was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome.
And not a lot of people know about that.
Speaker 10
One, because I don't talk about it that much. I'll post about it here and again.
And it's, it's, you know, people close to me know exactly what that is.
Speaker 10 But one of the reasons I never really talked about it prior was I said, you know what, I don't want to be labeled as the girl with Tourette's, you know, and then it's interesting because you hear celebrities and, you know, famous people with Tourette's as well say, say the same thing.
Speaker 10 Because in today's day and age, it's so easy to get a label based on
Speaker 10 anything that makes you stand out anymore. Right.
Speaker 5
What does, if you don't mind me interrupting here, and I probably will do this like a thousand times. Go ahead.
I'm just interested.
Speaker 5 Like Tourette's.
Speaker 5 So I don't, you you know you see like people with tourettes in movies right and it's overdrap just maybe break down if you could quickly for people like what what does that actually mean um absolutely yeah yeah so the the uh official definition to be diagnosed with tourettes is you have to have at least two motor ticks which are physical actions.
Speaker 10
So, you know, a twitch of some sort, or maybe you have to jump up and down, and one vocal tick. And vocal tick doesn't necessarily mean you have to be speaking words.
I know one of the
Speaker 10 common things that you'll see in comedies and
Speaker 10 the movies and stuff is people cursing.
Speaker 10 And that's just a piece that could happen with it. I'm lucky I didn't get that piece and I'll cover that in a minute.
Speaker 10 But I do have several ticks, you know, like sounds that I make with my mouse and they were a lot worse when I was younger. So that was also what's interesting is.
Speaker 10 wouldn't say I've grown out of it, but it's definitely gotten better. And I truly think it's just because I learned how to handle my emotions and stuff better.
Speaker 10 I've noticed that when I'm extremely stressed or the opposite, excited,
Speaker 10 my face twitches get crazy. And I focus more on that, I guess.
Speaker 6 Yeah.
Speaker 10 But yeah, so yeah, Tourette's, it's more prevalent in males, which is also very interesting.
Speaker 10
And they're not really sure. I say they, as in, you know, doctors, they're not really sure where it comes from.
It could be genetic, maybe. It could just be something that is developed.
Speaker 10 So there's still a lot of research going on on what it is and how it becomes a thing.
Speaker 10 And it's also one of those things where just because you have a tick of some sort, you know, or a habit is what I used to like to call them, doesn't mean you have Tourette's.
Speaker 10 So what started for me was when I was younger, I had really bad like squinting twitch and a couple other things, but that was really the prevalent one when I was younger.
Speaker 10 And my parents didn't know what it was. They thought it was just a habit that I was doing.
Speaker 10
So we created a reward system where if I could quit squinting squinting for 30 minutes, I'd get ice cream or something, you know. And I, people that know me know I love ice cream.
I love food.
Speaker 10 So that was a really hard thing to not win.
Speaker 10 And when they found that I could stop it for a little while, but it would come back worse, they're like, okay, something's, you know, something's going on. Yeah.
Speaker 10 It took a couple of years, but finally we took, you know, went to a psychiatrist and, you know, they, they diagnosed me with everything under the sun, which I've, I've started writing about because I thought, looking back on it, as a kid,
Speaker 10 you don't know that doctors should be asking a lot of questions, you know. And back then,
Speaker 10 so I thought, oh my gosh, I've got all these things wrong with me. Looking back on it, I think
Speaker 10 my parents probably could have gotten a second opinion. I think I still would have gotten diagnosed with Tourette's, absolutely.
Speaker 10
But they diagnose you with all the other things that they think come with Tourette's, like ADHD, OCD, depression, you know, all these other things. And I'm like, I'm in fourth grade, man.
Like,
Speaker 10 but
Speaker 10 the one thing that really did help with getting diagnosed was now I had a name for it. And it was easier to cope and explain to people because,
Speaker 10 you know, let's say I was twitching or I had, when I was younger, I had one where I would do this. It's almost like I was trying to get my hair out of my face.
Speaker 10 And it was like a, it was like I was shaking my head no. And teachers and
Speaker 10 like summer camp counselors thought I was telling them no and they would get really frustrated with that. So once I was able to have a name to that diagnosis, I could explain it.
Speaker 10 And even then, and even to this day, it's still such a misunderstood,
Speaker 10 you know, thing that it does take a little bit of extra steps to tell them, no, it's okay. I'm okay.
Speaker 10 It can be annoying, you know, but it's just part of me.
Speaker 5 I really, I couldn't agree with you more. And again.
Speaker 5 uh like i said like the whole point of that podcast the couple podcasts i did and and um and talking through with uh the insurance hub which is, I think, an incredible organization that I'm really excited as Mike continues to get that off the ground around neurodiversity in the insurance industry.
Speaker 5 You know, I think, you know,
Speaker 5
so I got diagnosed with ADHD. It's not debilitating.
I'm severely high functioning. And frankly, all it does is allow me.
Speaker 5 The main impact, though, has been my ability to understand how to communicate with people better.
Speaker 5 Because before I just thought I was excitable or I was considered like a troublemaker, not in that I did bad things, but that I was constantly like annoying the shit out of adults when I was a kid or they called me the megaphone or, you know, whatever, like a whole bunch of these things.
Speaker 5 As I've gotten into my work career,
Speaker 5 you know, I've been called
Speaker 5 disagreeable,
Speaker 5 overbearing.
Speaker 5 And in my mind, I'm going, I just have like 10,000 ideas and I want to share them with all of you all the time, like, cause I want to share them with you.
Speaker 5 And like, that's what my mind is saying is like, share, share, share, like, you know, let's go. Like,
Speaker 5 and I didn't realize,
Speaker 5
you know, that's overwhelming to some people. Like some people's brain, you know, don't don't work that way.
So, so I'm, it's been very interesting
Speaker 5
to your point, getting to your point where like having the label, I don't think that it, you know, I don't like to talk about it necessarily. I have been lately because I think it's important.
But
Speaker 5 as soon as you have the label, you're like, oh, now, now I can figure out how to work with that. Before, I was just like, am I really nuts?
Speaker 5
You know, like, like, like, you know, my ex-wife used to say to me all the time, like, why are you this way? Like, you're too much. You're too much.
You're too much all the time.
Speaker 5
She used to say that to me. And like, that started to think in.
I was like, man, am I just really like a fucking annoying person? Like, maybe I'm just annoying.
Speaker 5 And come to find out, it's actually true to someone like her,
Speaker 5 I was too much, I was annoying and all this. And now when I meet a normie, which is what I call non-neurodivergent people,
Speaker 5 now I'm
Speaker 5 like dial in a little bit and go, you know what, if I give this person full throttle, they're probably going to hate me. So I'm going to give them like half throttle and see how that goes.
Speaker 5 And, but it's all, once you have that name, you can work with it, I guess is a very long-winged way of saying that.
Speaker 10 And for those of you, since we aren't doing video, I'll let everyone know that my eyes are tearing up because I totally resonate with all of that.
Speaker 10 That I grew up with that exact same feeling with friends and, you know, even to this day, you know,
Speaker 10 with my peers,
Speaker 10 how I've combated that is setting the expectation up front is, hey, sometimes I can be a little much because like you, Ryan, I get super excited about my ideas and I want to share them all.
Speaker 10 And, and to people that like to take information and process it or be communicated with in a much different way, you know, that can be really overwhelming for them.
Speaker 10 So, I love the fact that you are open to, well, how do I communicate with others?
Speaker 10 Because there's, believe it or not, I'm sure you and I, I have yet to meet some, but there's people that are even more than
Speaker 10 how your brain works. And you'd probably be like, whoa, you know, how to that we work with that.
Speaker 10 So I think what's really interesting too is the word neurodivergent is actually, it was really new to me.
Speaker 10
You know, the last maybe 12 months or so. And I was just like, wow, that's, I never knew I fell into that category because I didn't even know it was a thing.
Yeah.
Speaker 5 It's same.
Speaker 10
Yeah, it's cool that people are talking about it. And I think the, just like any kind of DEI converse.
uh conversation of uh
Speaker 10 is just how do you communicate with others in the way they want to be communicated with?
Speaker 5
You know, the hard part is people like you and me are better than all the normies. So we actually have to dial it down.
I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
Speaker 5
All you normies out there who've made our lives miserable for the last however many. No, I'm just kidding.
I'm just kidding.
Speaker 5 No, but one of the things, and I don't know if you heard the show that I did
Speaker 5 with Michael from the Insurance Hub, but I did.
Speaker 10 Yeah, I listened to it and I love his energy too.
Speaker 5 I'm like, whoa, this is cool. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 And it's what, what, um, what I think is really interesting is that, and we talked a lot off the air too and have had other conversations off the air because I want to be involved with his organization more because I think it's very important.
Speaker 5 But one of the things that we've talked about is how
Speaker 5 unlike maybe other
Speaker 5 things that could be different about you, all right?
Speaker 5 Cause I don't want to say a handicap makes you in a different category of just things that could be different about you from the standard kind of normal version of a human, right?
Speaker 5 Neurodivergent people, and
Speaker 5 I think he would agree on this perspective to a certain extent. It is, I think,
Speaker 5 the onus is on us to work on ourselves to communicate in certain situations with people who may not know how to handle us, because I think it is too much of an ask
Speaker 5 to have the greater population change to adapt to us. So I think that
Speaker 5 my, you know, right now I have like seven and seven things going on in my head at one time. I'm trying to stay very focused on you, right?
Speaker 5 Like, I could easily fly off on a tangent if I allowed myself to do so, or if I were tired, or when I get excited, obviously that happens similar to you.
Speaker 5 But, but
Speaker 5 it is impossible for someone, and this is, this is what I learned mostly from my ex-wife, because she is a normie.
Speaker 5 It is impossible for her to follow along.
Speaker 5 So
Speaker 5 there are two things happening at one time.
Speaker 5 Those of us whose brain works in a different way, we need to work on ourselves to be able to communicate in a productive manner as much as we can to the people who maybe cannot keep up or cannot follow the way that our brain moves.
Speaker 5 And then we need to train leaders to
Speaker 5 I think, to better understand what is going on with someone's brain like ours and those like us so that they don't see us as troublemakers or as people who are too much or overbearing or what have you.
Speaker 5 They're able to dissect what's going on and use it for what it is, which I like to think of it as a superpower. Like
Speaker 10
Yeah, I love that perspective. And I think it's a very mature answer to some of the challenges that we're facing.
I think there's
Speaker 10 definitely training involved on both ends.
Speaker 10 And I love that the movement that you guys are trying to start of, you know, it's we need to learn how to communicate with others because it is a big ask to say, well, no, no, I want you to communicate with me the way I want to be communicated with.
Speaker 10 Like, that's not fair to anybody, regardless of what side you're on. Yeah.
Speaker 10 One of the really cool things that I've been involved in is feedback training and also, you know, know, personality assessments.
Speaker 10 I've always been a big fan of those, not to box you into, hey, this is who you are, but it allows, it opens up conversations just like this to say, hey, well, how, how do you like to be communicated with?
Speaker 10 What are the things that tick you off? You know, the, it really helps create understanding on both ends so that you guys can come to an agreement and set expectations up front.
Speaker 10
I think that's probably the. one of the biggest things that anyone that's neurodivergent can do is set the expectations.
And it doesn't have to be in a way of, hey, I've got this. And I, you know,
Speaker 10 I think it's real easy to fall into that trap. And I think this is probably a really polarizing statement, but like I've found that sometimes people use that as a crutch.
Speaker 10 And I'm, I, oh, it, yeah, it makes my blood boil any kind of victim mentality, but uh, 100%. I love it when people call it a superpower because when used right, it definitely can be.
Speaker 5 Oh, Kimmy, I, I, uh, so, so, you know, this has been, um,
Speaker 5 and I don't mean to keep referencing like my divorce, my ex-wife, but it was a moment in time where obviously, yeah, a big life event.
Speaker 5 That it was a big life event for me, absolutely, but, but, in um, in such a positive way. Uh, uh, we were not meant to be together.
Speaker 5 We, we produced two incredible children, but outside of that, she and I are very different people, and and not her way is right or wrong. My way is right, and her way is no, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Speaker 5 If she listens to that, um, but uh,
Speaker 5 kind of kidding, mostly not no.
Speaker 5 Um, so, but what it did was it forced me for a whole bunch of reasons, which may be obvious, maybe not, if anyone's ever been through something like this, to like be like, maybe I was the fucking problem.
Speaker 5
Like, you know what I mean? Like, I didn't think I was, but maybe I was, right? It's because something didn't work. And in doing so, I went to counseling and all this kind of stuff.
And,
Speaker 5 and it actually, it was a woman that I dated dated for a little while. We're not together anymore, but she was, she was actually,
Speaker 5 she had an even, I don't want to say worst case,
Speaker 6 a more,
Speaker 5
I don't know how you would describe it, a higher level of ADHD. Sure.
Yeah.
Speaker 5 We, we were, we went on a date and within 30 minutes, she looks at me and she goes, so you have ADHD, right? And I was like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 5 Like literally, no one had ever said that to me before.
Speaker 5 People had like said ADD or whatever, like, but as like a poke, but not, not like in a way, she wasn't asking to be a jerk. She was being honest, it was an honest question.
Speaker 5 And so I kind of like, I said, you know, so we started talking and she's like, I wasn't really, that was, she goes, that was kind of rhetorical, like you 100% do.
Speaker 5
And I kind of took that in and the conversation went on. And again, she wasn't being a jerk.
We were just talking.
Speaker 5
So then I saw my counselor like that that next week and I and I brought up this conversation that I had with her. And she goes, oh, yeah, I thought you like knew that.
Oh,
Speaker 5 and
Speaker 5 I
Speaker 5 was like, holy shit, what does this even mean? So then I had to go figure out because I don't even know what it means.
Speaker 5 I didn't even, I mean, I knew what the letters stand for, but I didn't know what it actually meant to my life or my brain worked.
Speaker 5 And
Speaker 5
the very first thing that my counselor said is, you cannot expect people to change the way they communicate with you. You have to change the way you communicate with them.
100%.
Speaker 10 Yeah.
Speaker 5 And to your point on a victimhood mentality and I also,
Speaker 5 I don't care what happens to me in my life the last thing in the world that i want to be is a victim so like i you know so i was like okay great and i could tell you kimmy this has been one of and i know we don't we don't know each other that well but like this has been one of the most profound changes in my relationships with every single person co-workers children
Speaker 5 my ex-wife,
Speaker 5 women that I may have dated. And that's not,
Speaker 5 been that many women, but you know, a couple of people that I've had relationships with since.
Speaker 5 My parents, just everybody, because now
Speaker 5
I can go into a conversation and be like, okay, Ryan, you have 30 minutes. Here's the topic that you're talking about.
I keep notes. I now start making agendas to stay on track, right?
Speaker 5 In places where it's appropriate. And
Speaker 5 I just,
Speaker 5 I,
Speaker 5 man, I feel like
Speaker 5 there's so
Speaker 5 it all of a sudden, like, it opens your whole world when you know that you have this thing and you can work on it. And I, um, I want more people to
Speaker 5 feel comfortable having these conversations and working through these things, I guess, which is why I love that we're having this conversation.
Speaker 10 Yeah, and that hits the point. I mean, just in general, regardless of whether someone's neurodivergent or not, having that, being able to have those kind of
Speaker 10 conversations and give feedback. And the timing on this couldn't be more perfect.
Speaker 10 Literally yesterday, and I posted this on LinkedIn too, I had a coworker reach out to me and say, hey, Kimmy, this is super unconventional, but can I reach out to you and give you some feedback?
Speaker 10
And I'm like, yes. I got, first of all, I got so excited because he's the first one that's ever reached out to give me feedback.
So I'm like, ooh, what is it? What can I get better?
Speaker 10
And it was around communication. I'm like, oh, boy.
And I kind of knew what was coming. But, you know, he said, Kimmy, you have great ideas,
Speaker 10 you know, and you communicate well, you know, in certain channels, but, you know, maybe you can add some more context to your emails.
Speaker 10 So I wasn't being detailed enough is what basically what he was asking. But first of all, props to him because he presented it in an amazing way.
Speaker 10 And two, it just reminded me, I'm like, well, thank goodness I was taught.
Speaker 10 to be learning-based and be open to that kind of feedback because that could have gone way differently, you know, if it was two different people having this conversation.
Speaker 10 So it just, it felt really good one, one, to have that happen. And I'm like, you know, imagine what the world would be like if we could teach people how to be open like that.
Speaker 10 And like you said, too, it's it, we can't go around asking, well, I'm this way, you need to communicate me with this way, you know, because everybody, everybody wants, has a certain way they want to be communicated with, right?
Speaker 10 And it's up to us to
Speaker 10 like, okay, so here's, here's the thing.
Speaker 10 I, I grew up in a family of engineers so you can imagine how different our personalities are and I had to learn you know social skills I had to learn communication styles that definitely was not stuff that came naturally and I'm I'm still learning it I'm not perfect by any means
Speaker 10 and I think that's that's how it is for most people you know the confidence
Speaker 10 communication all of that is a learned skill over time
Speaker 9 what's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. And in exchange for that, I need your help.
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Speaker 9
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Speaker 9 We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business.
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Peace. Let's get back to the episode.
Speaker 5 You said that you were taught to be learning-based.
Speaker 5 What does that mean?
Speaker 5 What did that look like? Like,
Speaker 5 I love that concept.
Speaker 5 Maybe just expand on that a little bit.
Speaker 10
It's my environment. It dates all the way back to my parents.
They are both extremely intelligent and very open-minded.
Speaker 10 They did a really good job raising me and my little sister without labels, without
Speaker 10 telling us that we had to do
Speaker 10 one thing one way or another. They allowed us to be ourselves
Speaker 10 and still be very nurturing around that. So, for example,
Speaker 10 like when I was diagnosed with Tourette's, you know,
Speaker 10
they didn't make a big deal out of it. They're like, okay, it's just part of you, you know, and so that was the way I grew up.
It's like, oh, it's just part of me, you know, whatever. And
Speaker 10 my mom allowed me to be creative. Like,
Speaker 10 no one can see it on the podcast, but if you look me up on LinkedIn, I have purple hair, you know, like I had crazy hair.
Speaker 10 And my mom let me do that since I was little, you know, as long as I kept my room clean, of course. But
Speaker 10 so she allowed me to be creative and be myself. And then also, I've just been really lucky or have done a good job of surrounding myself with people that are similar, that are just very growth-minded.
Speaker 10 That's what I mean by learning-based is just people that understand that, like, there's always room for improvement. And your perspective isn't always, you know, the only one that exists.
Speaker 10 And I think that's, that was probably the biggest piece that my parents really helped drive home for me and my sister. You know, I mean, in all the sensitive subjects, like religion, you know,
Speaker 10 political views and things like that. Like, I knew where my parents stood, but they never once told me I had to be that way, you know, which was super respectable.
Speaker 10 And, and, and eventually, I did adopt most of what they, you know,
Speaker 10 what they run with, but it was cool. It allowed me to explore,
Speaker 10 you know, other religions, other, you know, whatever, just to see what else is out there and kind of create and, you know, develop my own ideas about life. And I think that
Speaker 10 that, if I didn't have that i absolutely would not be who i am today
Speaker 10 and uh i hope i hope i can leave that with people you know that i come in and interact with i love that i uh
Speaker 5 so there's a couple things in there um
Speaker 5 i had a different but similar upbringing um actually my father was
Speaker 5 he's a tremendous dad and uh and uh and a tremendous grandfather to my children but he was um for me although now he's a pushover for me, he was incredibly overbearing, incredibly overbearing.
Speaker 5 It was my way or the highway.
Speaker 5 And unfortunately,
Speaker 5 he went to jail for about three years for drinking. And
Speaker 5
when he was taken away, all of a sudden, I got my mom 100%. My mom is more accept everyone.
You know, she has her views and
Speaker 5 whatever of life. And she shared those with me.
Speaker 5 And we had lots of conversations, but where I have, where I had questions, where I had different thoughts, where I had different experiences, she was, we talked about all that stuff.
Speaker 5 And it was very, very open.
Speaker 5 You know, she was much more probably, if you read a parenting book, she's probably doing a lot of things wrong, but we were much more like friends than, I mean, obviously, she was my mom and I treated her with respect, but like we, we had a very.
Speaker 5 uh friendly relationship outside of a more kind of standardized maybe 1950s parent-child relationship sure but it sounds like you were able to have open conversations conversations that you might not have had otherwise.
Speaker 5 Yes. And I think for so many people, they don't get that, right? They, they grow up thinking the world is a way.
Speaker 5 And they get older and they do the thing that I probably dislike most in the world
Speaker 5
is they put their shit on other people. And I actually just did a post.
about this that I'm going to expand upon maybe in my in a blog.
Speaker 5 I did just a social media post about it where I basically just said, like,
Speaker 5 you know, if there's a secret to to having good relationships is don't put your shit on other people your shit gets to be your shit it's America we're blessed that we were we're born in this country but I feel like we've we've missed and we've missed uh we've started to shy away from that what freedom actually means in this country which is it used to mean I get to live my life and Kimmy gets to live her life and we can interact with each other.
Speaker 5 And
Speaker 5 I love that Kimmy gets to live the way she gets to live and Ryan gets to live the way he lives together. And it's great.
Speaker 5 And we can interact and do all these things and we have individuality yeah we have a few social constructs which allow us to interact in a healthy way but otherwise you can do all your crazy and i can do all my crazy and everything's good and i feel like we've gotten to a point unfortunately where now freedom is i get to live how i want and kimmy you have to live how i want or it's not freedom and i'm like well that doesn't really work because doesn't doesn't kimy get to think the exact same thing back and then we get all this polarization and craziness.
Speaker 5 And it's everywhere. It's there's no right or there's no like right side or wrong side, although one side is obviously wronger than the other.
Speaker 5 Um, but but you know, there's there's you know, and I, and I hate that because I think that permeates. Um,
Speaker 5 I feel like people are less willing to be open in public because of this, they're less willing to share experiences with people.
Speaker 5 Our circles become tiny, tiny little circles and tiny, tiny little communities. Everything's velvet roped because we're so worried about people seeing who we are and then putting their shit on us.
Speaker 5 And I, and I really dislike that. And I feel like when you are raised the way you were raised and kind of the way I was raised too, you, you grow up looking at that and it just feels wrong, right?
Speaker 5 Like you don't, maybe no, you don't, I haven't certainly known how to express it. And I've certainly expressed it in ways that were unproductive at times, but we all have,
Speaker 5 you know, this, this. you know, you, you,
Speaker 5 you know, people shouldn't put their stuff on you. You shouldn't put your stuff on them.
Speaker 5
And I think this goes so much for the way that we interact and why I love your story about this guy giving you feedback. I mean, I'll be quiet.
Wow. I'm talking storm.
Speaker 5 I just love that.
Speaker 10 Oh, sorry.
Speaker 5
No, no, no, no. I think it's great.
Is that what he was, what, or I assumed it was he. I think you said he.
Yeah, I think he
Speaker 5
was, was, it wasn't a judgment of you. Not it was a, hey, here's a way for you to be more productive if you want to be this.
And that, that to me is a hundred percent the right way to do this.
Speaker 10
It's so he did it because he cares. Yeah.
And I think that was the big thing.
Speaker 10 And, and, and I was taught, you know, when you are giving feedback, that's, that's honestly, that's the best way to have a hard conversation with somebody is, hey, I need to have a hard conversation with you.
Speaker 10
Please know it's because I love you or it's because I care. It's, you know, this is not to hurt you as a person.
It's addressing the situation or the act or the, you know, the action rather.
Speaker 10 But I love everything that you just said within the last five minutes because it ties back to everything we just said at the beginning of, you know,
Speaker 10 we can't expect people to communicate with us the way we want, just like people can't expect people to live their life the way they want them to live, you know, and vice versa.
Speaker 10 I mean, gosh, this could be a whole podcast on this topic itself. And
Speaker 10 it's interesting because
Speaker 10 what you said, these days, what I've found is that people are very scared to voice their opinions. And
Speaker 10 I'm, believe it or not, as agree, I am a very agreeable person, but I am very opinionated in the things that I am passionate about, you know, and I found, especially in the workplace,
Speaker 10 when people need to give feedback, they get scared, you know, whether it's, well, I don't want to be singled out or,
Speaker 10 sorry, I got lost on that one. But what I'm getting at is
Speaker 10 because of the way
Speaker 10 And we can blame it on social media, we can blame it on whatever we want, right? That people do get ganged up on when you stand out,
Speaker 10 you know, and I think, and maybe you can relate to this,
Speaker 10 you know, with your ADHD is I've grown up standing out. So to me, it's no different when you do get singled out and
Speaker 10
not being afraid of that. And not everybody has had that experience.
So I had to humble myself and go, okay, Kimmy, not. not everyone has, not everybody has opened a business, first of all, too.
Speaker 10 The reason I'm bringing that up and to give you some context is when I'm talking to people about, you know, sales or running, you know, managing something, and then I'm remembering, oh my goodness, I'm coming at it from a completely different perspective.
Speaker 10 Not everyone's ran a business. Not everyone's gone through the experiences that, you know, that I've gone through.
Speaker 10 And I think having that perspective, regardless of what topic you're talking about, I think is really the key. And that's what would help these, you know, people feeling polarized.
Speaker 10
I mean, there's not everyone's going to agree. You know, some of my best friends have the complete complete opposite political and religious views.
You know, but we're like, we're good friends.
Speaker 10 We just, we just know, hey, you believe one thing. I believe one thing.
Speaker 10 You voted for so-and-so. You know, it,
Speaker 10 but, but we're still friends at the end of the day because we're, we're kind and we respect each other. And I think that comes, that, that, that word respect really resonates with me.
Speaker 10 I read an article a while back about they actually interviewed couples, like people that have married for like 50 years, people that, you know, got divorced and, you know, talked.
Speaker 10 They basically did this whole long interview. And at the end of the day, everyone, it all came back down to respect.
Speaker 10 You know, the ones that have been together forever, like they, they just have this respect that has been there for so long. And the ones that got divorced lost the respect.
Speaker 10 And I think, you know, regardless of the dynamic you have with somebody, and whether it's at work, whether it is a romantic relationship, that respect piece is what's absolutely paramount, you know, to have a productive
Speaker 5 conversation. I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 5 And I think, um, you know, one of the things that I've had to work with some of my younger employees on, younger team members, especially my younger leaders, is that
Speaker 5 you don't get respect
Speaker 5
and you don't deserve respect. It's earned over time.
And frankly, the best way to earn it is to give it. as much as you possibly can, as often as you can to other people.
Speaker 5 And then over time, it will come back to you. And I feel like, unfortunately,
Speaker 5 call it, we could blame social media, we could blame whatever, we could blame liberals.
Speaker 5 You know, I think that
Speaker 5 we could blame right orthodoxy too. These people feel like because they show up and they have an opinion that somehow we all need to just respect them or I'm this, my job title is this.
Speaker 5
So I deserve respect. Or, you know, I'm a...
I'm a,
Speaker 5 you know, this, the insert demographic group.
Speaker 5 I just even people in the neurodiversity yeah it's like we're not immune to that either yeah it's like yeah it's like 100 no you don't you earn it that that's you earn it now how much have you given out are you respectful of your three team members are you treating them are you understanding the way they want to be communicated with are you listening to them are you putting are you doing the same are you like uh uh uh putting you know taking the garbage out you know i always think through that idea of like yeah leaders take the garbage out you know and uh if you're not then you don't deserve respect right so like there's a reason you're getting they're talking behind your back because you're not you haven't done the work and um
Speaker 10 i think that's really yeah or you haven't opened up enough to them for them to to take the time to respect you and your your vision you know yeah I want to go back to something you said, though, that I, that I completely agree with.
Speaker 5 And I would like to just poke at a little more, which is this idea of
Speaker 5 when you've always felt different, being different isn't hard.
Speaker 5 I'm paraphrasing a little bit what you said, but I think that's essentially what you said.
Speaker 5 I could not agree with that more.
Speaker 5 Despite being a six foot four white guy, you're six foot four.
Speaker 5 Yeah, everyone thinks I'm like 5'1. That's crazy.
Speaker 10 You're tall. Yeah.
Speaker 5 Yeah. I have to put like hashtag tall in my bio so people know.
Speaker 5 I can't tell you how many conferences I've been to, and people are like, I thought you were going to be short.
Speaker 10 Oh my goodness.
Speaker 5 So
Speaker 5 despite, you know, being a white dude from the north,
Speaker 5
I have always felt different my entire life. I've never been an insider and I've certainly never felt like an insider ever.
Like I literally, I have never felt that way.
Speaker 5 I've never felt like I was in the cool kids club. I've never felt like I was like easily accepted.
Speaker 5
I've always been a little different. And there's a whole bunch of reasons for that I won't get into.
But
Speaker 5 so now
Speaker 5 as an adult at 42, I've certainly, I've also hit an age where I just don't give a fuck anymore.
Speaker 5 So like, you know, couple that with also being rewarded today, like today's society and I think where I am in my career,
Speaker 5 having different ideas delivered respectfully, which I have not always done, just to be clear,
Speaker 5 delivered respectfully.
Speaker 5 is like uh it's like a super like uh not i'm overusing the word superpower it's it's a it's a it's a it's a gift right you feel you're like oh my gosh, today I don't, like, I can't even think what it would be like to be a best practices agency.
Speaker 5 I think it's cute that people are best practices agencies, but if you're a best practice agency, you know what I know? Exactly how to beat you.
Speaker 5 And, you know, that to me is something that I feel like people don't think about. If you are living by the same rules that everyone else lives by, that's nice.
Speaker 5 But you are also, in my opinion, way more vulnerable. And
Speaker 5 that's why I feel like people who feel different, I hope that conversations like this one, what it shows them is with respect and appreciation for the people you're communicating with.
Speaker 5 You don't just get to be an asshole because you feel different or have a different opinion.
Speaker 5 That is something you should cultivate and be proud of and surround yourself with other people that feel that way because
Speaker 5 it is something truly that today, I think employers are looking for. you know, respectfully, people who can think differently and do it in a way that isn't like being a jerk.
Speaker 5 I think those people are going to make more. I think that
Speaker 5 employers are out there searching for these types of people. I think these are the types of people that start companies, that change dynamics, that have conversations that open people's eyes.
Speaker 5 And I just want more and more people to feel comfortable with this type of mentality.
Speaker 5 I guess. I'm assuming to a certain extent you agree, but I'd love your thoughts on that.
Speaker 10 I do agree, actually, with everything that you said. I think
Speaker 10 there's two parts to this. I think these days, being different has become mainstream.
Speaker 5 And shit, now I need to become a conformist. Right?
Speaker 10
No, don't do that. No.
But I tread lightly with that because
Speaker 10 it's used.
Speaker 10 How do I say this? It is used in a victim way in a lot from what I'm seeing. And that
Speaker 10 it's interesting.
Speaker 10 Trying to think of an example that
Speaker 10 would drive home my point. But let's say,
Speaker 10 well, I'll use myself, but pretend. Let's say, oh, I've got Tourette's and I think it's cool, but you know, you need to treat me different because I'm because I'm different.
Speaker 10 Okay, that was really elementary, but that's basically what I'm getting at. You know, you'll see posts or, you know, here,
Speaker 10 even if you just go to a restaurant and listen to some conversations around you and eavesdrop, and
Speaker 10 it just boggles my mind
Speaker 10 how some people talk to to each other. But I think,
Speaker 5 well, I think just while you're thinking about that, I think a lot of people, instead of doing the really hard work of figuring out how to maximize the things that make them different, they're just way more willing to use those as crutches to get shallow feedback and shallow victories.
Speaker 5 um that make them feel better right so so they'll post something on social media about whatever their thing that they want to be victimized about is to get likes. Oh, you're great the way you are.
Speaker 5 Well, I'll be honest with you. I, I'm a, I'm a, I'm, at this point, I'm probably a Jordan Peterson disciple.
Speaker 5 I mean, outside of God, I think that his methodology for living is like right up there on par with like Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics.
Speaker 5
And, you know, he says he has this clip that's passed around social media all the time. You can probably find it.
um but it was in his book 12 rules for life where he basically says like
Speaker 5
he's the clip will usually start with something like he'll say, like, good enough, but with a question mark. And he's like, you're not good enough.
Everybody wants to tell people you're good enough.
Speaker 5
You're not. Why are you good enough? What do you mean? So, so, so you have this thing about you.
It doesn't make that mean that you're perfect the way you are.
Speaker 5 It doesn't mean that you're good enough the way you are.
Speaker 5 It doesn't mean you should hate yourself, but it certainly doesn't mean that you shouldn't commit yourself to something you said earlier, which I respect and love, constantly working to improve.
Speaker 5 And I feel like people find a thing that gives them an out or a or a ripcord or whatever, and then they just lean on that thing, right?
Speaker 5 It's like you could have so easily taken the fact that you have Tourette's and had your life be half of what it is today because you used it as a crutch or a tool to get some sort of shallow victory when you needed it.
Speaker 5 But you obviously didn't. You plowed through it, you learned how to become a musician, you learned how to become a champion bowler, right?
Speaker 5 And all these other things that make you who you are because you pushed through it and you constantly improved, which is, which I think should be held on the highest level of respect.
Speaker 5 But I think too often we find a thing that gives us a shallow victory that we can kind of play as a victim thing. You know,
Speaker 5 I have inflammation or
Speaker 5
I have I get migraines or I get whatever. And all these things are shitty.
Don't get me wrong. They're shitty for sure.
Speaker 5
And there's things way worse. But, you know, then I met a guy.
I was speaking in North Carolina. This was years ago.
His name name is Sergeant Fuck. Oh, my gosh.
Speaker 10 Great name.
Speaker 5 Yeah, no, I wish it was Sergeant Fuck. His name is, oh my gosh, Auby, Aubi, you'll know.
Speaker 5 What the, oh, gosh, Sergeant, it's going to kill me. But
Speaker 5 he had
Speaker 5 a hand, an arm, and both legs blown off in the war.
Speaker 5 And this dude, if you see him, he's got a big smile on his face. He's still married.
Speaker 5 he's got two kids he's got this badass truck that he had rigged out he does these speaking gigs he's funny as hell um like he come he came on stage man i'm gonna i'm not gonna do it justice but it's just an example like this dude could have just laid in bed become a 400 pound blimp and said because of all these things that happened to me you know none of this is my fault and he didn't he's got an apparel company that he uses the proceeds to help veterans with depression and veterans who've lost limbs and he starts to talk.
Speaker 5 He walks out and he's standing there and he's kind of looking at everybody.
Speaker 5
And he's kind of deadpanning it, which I thought was great. And then he looks down in his crotch and he goes, I know what you're all thinking.
And it's still there.
Speaker 5 And like the whole place just goes,
Speaker 5
you know, just starts laughing because, you know, you don't know. You see this guy come up and your first instinct is he's going to be fucking depressed.
And he wasn't.
Speaker 5 And I was like, oh my God, if that dude can, and I'm sure he has bad days too, don't get me wrong. Oh, but like everyone, yeah.
Speaker 5 But for that dude, that dude to be able to be a fucking marine, like top of your life, physical fitness, badass, and to come home and then still have that mentality. I'm like, God.
Speaker 5 So I got a couple of conversations happening in my brain. You know what I mean? Like, I think I'm doing all right.
Speaker 5 Yeah.
Speaker 10 No, well, and I, to, to drive home a point on that is, is shout out to you for using that as inspiration, because people with a victim mentality would see that and, and go, well, uh,
Speaker 10
they, they, they they just wouldn't see it like that. You know, well, that won't happen to me, or I'm not at that level.
I can't, you know, and start making up this story in their head.
Speaker 10 So shout out to you for using that for inspiration. And I love that you brought up the 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson, because I just have a funny story I have to share.
Speaker 5 Yeah, please.
Speaker 10
Because not many people follow him because he is a polarizing guy. But so I bought my boyfriend a mug.
a 12 rules for life mug off of Amazon, thinking it was the Jordan Peterson 12 Rules for Life.
Speaker 10
I didn't even read it. I just bought it because it said 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson mug, right? Ryan, this is literally what it says.
The last two are the most hilarious.
Speaker 10 Number 11, do not bother children while they're skateboarding.
Speaker 10
Number 12, pet a cat when you encounter one on the street. Now, you know, those are not the rules.
So someone like literally put these on there, and I'm like, oh my gosh, but it was hilarious.
Speaker 5 Yeah,
Speaker 5 that would be like, yeah, those are like the most, most like skewed derivatives of what he's actually trying to teach.
Speaker 10 I actually think it's hilarious, though.
Speaker 5 I actually think the thing, the thing I, I actually, I have, um, I save a lot of stuff. I'm, I'm kind of crazy with, I, I love to be inspired.
Speaker 5 I love to take in people are just like, oh, that stuff's trite.
Speaker 5
Why do you like, I can get caught in like a positive, like I've broken the fucking TikTok algorithm because it doesn't show me any negative shit. Like if it's negative.
Fantastic.
Speaker 5 And I just, but I love, I can just consume.
Speaker 10 You should teach a class on that, honestly. I think that's, that's the problem is people get just bombarded with this junk.
Speaker 5 Well, I'm just, I'm not interested in negativity. I hate negativity, frankly.
Speaker 5 To me, it couldn't be more of a turn off, not just like in a partner, but like in another human that I interact with when they're negative. I just, I cannot stand it.
Speaker 5
And frankly, I just don't tolerate it. Like, if someone's going to be negative, I mean, we all have moments, right? You get moments.
That's not what I'm talking about.
Speaker 5
I'm talking about a lifestyle of negativity. Couldn't be more of a turn off to me because, so what the fuck? You can call out shit that's bad.
Like, good for you.
Speaker 5 that's not that's not a that's not a positive characteristic you're not smarter because people will be like well i'm a realist no you're an asshole
Speaker 5 you know what i mean like you're a realist okay i get it life is hard we all realize it we wake up every day like we get it but how about we start to figure out you know, better ways to operate.
Speaker 5 But, but so I get caught in these loops, but I have this one that I save and I have, and I'll go through, there's like a, there's like a few of them that I like, we'll go through in this saved list and Instagram or one of them that I just watch.
Speaker 5 And it's one of the ones that I watch almost every day is by Jordan Peterson. And it's this idea of
Speaker 5
he's being interviewed and the guy says, you're telling men to be monsters. And he's like, yes.
And the guy is kind of incredulous, right? He's probably a liberal.
Speaker 5
And he's kind of incredulous. And Jordan Peterson's like, Jordan Peterson's like, what? So be weak? He's like, that's what we want.
We want weak people, weak men.
Speaker 5 And specifically, he's talking about men, um, you know, in
Speaker 5
our society today. And he's like, so we need more weak men.
He goes, no, he goes, you should not be weak. He's like, you should be an absolute killer monster.
And then learn how to control it.
Speaker 5 He said, because there's no virtue in being weak if you're weak, right? It's easy to be weak. and to be deferential and to be a beta if you're a deferential weak beta that's easy.
Speaker 5 But if you're an absolute killer and you're able to control it and
Speaker 5 make the decision to be better and to be a good person, despite the fact that inside you is a monster, that there's real virtue in that. And that to me is something that I hold in my brain every day.
Speaker 5
Now, I wasn't in the military. I don't know how to do jiu-jitsu.
I have no idea how I would act in a situation that required you to be a monster.
Speaker 5
But I think the concept, the idea of be the most powerful, dominant, you know, thing you can be. And I just think this goes for women too.
It's just, he gets so attacked for his views on men.
Speaker 5 He was talking specifically about men.
Speaker 5 And then figure out how to be a better version of you with that inside you, that that's where real virtue lies. To me, that speaks to the virtue victimhood mentality.
Speaker 5
It speaks to constant improvement. It speaks to self-awareness.
It speaks to respect. It speaks to
Speaker 5 understanding how to operate with personal agency, which is something I feel like we do not talk about at all in our society enough is what personal agency means and how important it is. And
Speaker 5 I don't know how the hell we got that far down that.
Speaker 10 I don't know, but I honestly, I think this, this should become a second episode. We should definitely schedule a second one and go deeper in this.
Speaker 5
This is fun. For sure.
I know
Speaker 5
you got an open invitation. Whenever you want to come back, I feel like we're just scratching the the surface.
So, so let me, I want to be respectful of your time and of the audiences.
Speaker 5 So let me just hit you with a couple of things.
Speaker 5 Do you think that your
Speaker 5 do you think that your
Speaker 5 desire to take on these hobbies and they're fairly intense things, you know, and being a musician and stuff. Do you think that
Speaker 5 that's that's part of a way of dealing? Do you think that's who you are? Or do you think it's part of a way of dealing with the way that your mind works?
Speaker 5
Because I know I've found that that in my own life. I research shit.
I am, if I get something on my brain, I have to research it really. And it's just the way that I work.
Speaker 5 And it's because of the way my brain works. Do you think that that is the same for you?
Speaker 10 I think so. And I think a lot of it is
Speaker 10
because it's hard for me to just sit tight. And my, you know, my brain wants to do something.
So mine, rather than doing the research, I just go and take action.
Speaker 10 I'm like, okay, I'm going to go try this thing. If I fail miserably, like, eh, whatever, I learned something, you know, but I still, I, I, I'm always looking for something new.
Speaker 10
And then, of course, when I do it, I want to be the best I can be at it. That's hence where the competitive nature comes in.
You know, like, I, I enjoy recognition, I enjoy being a winner.
Speaker 10 So I find something I want to do. And I'm like, okay, let's go do it the best we can, you know? And I think a lot of it is just, like you said, the way my brain works.
Speaker 10 And thank goodness, because of my environment, once again, my, my mom was really encouraging to try new things. And she literally said,
Speaker 10
you can't say you don't like it until you try it. You know, you know, like, I remember she had me play soccer and I don't want to play soccer.
By the way, I hated soccer.
Speaker 10
But eventually I tried softball and loved that and, you know, and so on and so forth. Right.
But because she constantly was pushing, just try it. Just try it.
Speaker 10
I think I brought that into the rest of my life. And thanks, mom.
Thanks, mom and dad. You know, a lot of it goes back to that.
Speaker 5
Well, I think that you're a testament to how someone can be quote unquote different. I'm doing air quotes.
You can't see me, but also highly successful.
Speaker 5
I've, I probably talked too much, but I was just excited to talk to you. We will absolutely do this again.
I know you have to run. I'll make sure I have your LinkedIn
Speaker 5 in the show notes and people should definitely follow Kimmy on LinkedIn. Where is there any other places you'd like to send them?
Speaker 10 They can, I'm on all the socials. I'm on Facebook,
Speaker 10
Instagram. The good news is I have a really unique name, Kimmy Codonahue.
Haven't found anyone else with that name yet. So
Speaker 10
definitely look forward to connecting with everyone. And thank you so much for this, Ryan.
This was super cool.
Speaker 5
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.
And I look forward to the next time. Have a great one.
Awesome. Bye.
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