The latest episode, chock full of goodness

HOW TO BE AUTHENTIC AND WHOLE

8/30/2020

Come on a journey with us, in which our heroes grow up together in a safe but restrictive community, begin to question that community, fall down a slippery slope, crash their Jenga tower, lose everything, find their authentic selves - including their anger, gain everything, discover a new kind of joy, and then create a sanctuary where all are truly, deeply welcome. Turns out it was the sanctuary that they needed all along.

This successful heroes’ journey is a story that we hope will give you joy and hope for your own complicated journey. We all fall down (or get kicked out), but our guests this week are here to remind us what’s on the other side. This is the third episode in our bounce-back series and we hope you’ll get a lot of value from it.

Our guests this week are Kate and Colby Martin, co pastors of Sojourn Grace Collective, a progressive Christian church in San Diego, California. Their church is a fully inclusive, open and affirming community that welcomes all and works for justice. How they got there is not easy.

Kate and Colby have known each other since childhood, growing up in the same conservative evangelical church. Colby became a successful youth pastor in a megachurch, but he and Kate both began to question what they had been brought up to believe. After years of soul-searching and growth, the two left (were thrown out, really) the safety of that harbor for the uncharted seas. I’m happy to report that, while their journey was difficult and painful, they have landed on a beautiful shore and gone on to build their own kind of paradise together with their 4 sons and their community in San Diego.

At first glance, Kelly and I are not the obvious guides for Kate and Colby’s story. Neither of us grew up in a church and I, at least, am pretty skeptical about divinity and an afterlife. That said, this episode turned into a meeting of the minds and hearts. Our “outsider” status and questions actually helped the Martins unlock some old meaning. Their grounded, but inclusive faith gave us a path back toward our spiritual selves.

Prepare thyself for a gorgeous deep dive into the nature of God, dogma, imperfection, depression, and authenticity, on this fabulous double date episode. We did have a snafu at the beginning of the session and lost a chunk of the recording, so there might be a couple of references that seem untethered, but what we did get was fucking fantastic, if I do say so, myself. To compensate for the loss of part of the conversation, we include, in this recording, the mid-roll banter that we usually cut out. We want you all to have as much Kate and Colby as possible.

Key Takeaways:

There are lots of different kinds and sources of depression/authenticity - circumstantial, spiritual, etc.
We grow and mature by adding and accessing all the parts of ourselves not by repressing them
Childhood wounds are often caused by people trying to “fix” us back then, so revisiting them isn’t necessarily the way to heal. Just bring the littles along.
Childhood wounds are often caused by people trying to “fix” us back then, so revisiting them isn’t necessarily the way to heal. Just bring the littles along.

Quotes:

“I apologize for being fabulous” - KR
“We need to have a better conversation about depression” - KM

References:

Sojourn Grace Collective - Kate and Colby’s Church
Cobly Martin’s Website
The Kate and Colby Show Podcast
Umhair Haque on existential depression

Resources:

The Shift at Indie Bound
The Forgotten Tradition of Sin - Colby's TEDx Talk

Music Credits: “All Our Life” mixkit.co

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HOW TO BE USEFUL: There is Always Something

8/23/2020

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We know so many of our listeners are people who are working in the community to make things better for people who are marginalized and therefore, the community as a whole. But we're guessing that even you powerhouses might feel at a loss sometimes, especially in these crazy times.

"What can I do that is effective? What will actually help? What is my capacity to take on more? These are all questions I struggle with regularly and maybe you do, too. "

Our guest this week is serial entrepreneur and problem-solver Laura Fitton. A college chum from my Cornell days, Laura and Charles spent a lot of time together at Cornell Outdoor Education leading backpacking trips, teaching rock climbing and developing communication and leadership skills. Even back then, Laura stood out with her intelligence, drive and courage. Those characteristics showed up in the first thing she chose to do after college. She got a job cooking for an educational program on a tall ship sailing back and forth across the Atlantic. She took that job despite being prone to sea-sickness because she believed in the Sea Education Association and its mission.

Laura eventually took her smarts and passion and started her own internet start up called oneforty.com after the original character limit on then-nascent Twitter. She sold her company to a large inbound marketing company and got to host a major annual conference featuring some pretty amazing speakers.

Laura went on to start a company to address climate change (the Enough Company) and the pandemic (The PPE Index). The throughline in all her ventures was seeing a need and deciding to do something to meet it, with her trademark intelligence and empathy.

This episode started off talking about the nature of entrepreneurship but ended up diving into the nature of evil and how to avoid it. No, seriously… the nature of evil.

So be prepared to get inspired, enlightened, and frankly, a little challenged. There are some very clear calls to action in this episode.

Key Takeaways:

How to be an early adopter/evangelizer
- Your ideas are something to SHARE - that’s what gives them attractive value
- Be fascinated
- Your anxiety can be adaptive if it helps you see new things on the horizon. But it’s mal-adaptive if it makes you freeze. Use your anxiety to notice things but tame it so you can function for yourself and the world.
- Instead of pitching someone (trying to convince them to do something for you) … find out how to be useful to them.
How to help solve the Climate Crisis
- Your energy spending, food purchasing, and banking decisions can make a difference.
- Purchase your power from Arcadia.com.
- Choose to bank at an institution that invests in ways that backs up your beliefs. Credit Unions are great options.
How to Be Good
- Focus on empathy
- Remember:
  - The binary is a myth
  - People are not objects
  - Don’t get lost in your own shit
- When we fall into all three mistakes, that’s where evil comes from

References:

Resources:

Do a Science:

Support your closest, hardest-hit, community

Coronavirus cases by county

Find an organization in that community
Ask them what they need

OR Just Choose
Dine (Navajo) Nation Recovery Fund

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August 16th, 2020

8/16/2020

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What if you could reinvent yourself? What if you did it again and again? If you haven’t already done it yourself, can you even imagine where such a journey would take you and who you would become?

Our guest this week is Melanie Banayat, owner of Wing Space Co-working here in Prescott. Her career has included graphic design, resort management, holistic health coaching, and fine art. Through each career, Melanie was a typical entrepreneur, grabbing opportunities, working hard, and creating success so she has a ton of experience to share.

After having to reinvent herself a number of times, Melanie now helps others do the same. Not just a place to rent a desk and make copies, Wing Space fosters budding entrepreneurs in all the areas they need to succeed. In response to the Covid Crisis that is forcing so many of us to retool our business or turn our side-gig into an enterprise, Melanie and the folks at Wingspace have created Launch, an incredibly valuable class for folks going through the business start up process. It is a six-week, self-paced virtual class with dozens of video tutorials PLUS peer-to-peer coaching in an accountability group (Called a Mastermind group.) A class like this would normally cost thousands of dollars. Your jaw will drop when you hear how inexpensive Melanie had made it.

We recorded 3 episodes this week and the thread that ran through all of them was what happens when your life burns down. All of our guests found the grit and tenacity to keep going when it looked like all was lost, and in that darkness, found gifts that helped them build new lives that turned out to be more authentic, more meaningful, and more powerful than those they left in the ashes.

Do a Science This Week
Find something to do that has a high likelihood of failure and do it anyway. Make sure to pick something where failure has low consequences. Some examples:

Make a challenging recipe from scratch like a souffle or something involving puff pastry
Try to learn a new musical instrument or brand new sport
Pitch your wildest idea to someone you don’t know well

Notice how you feel before, during, and after. Keep track of what you learned. Let us know in the comments for the episode what you tried and how it worked out.

SHOW NOTES
Key Takeaways:

Business skills are important, especially for creatives
Business skills are learn-able, even later in life
Entrepreneurs have important skills in times of economic and social crisis
- Entrepreneurs are always looking for new, unexplored opportunities
- Entrepreneurs are flexible and adaptable
Entrepreneurs, especially solopreneurs need community and collaboration

Want to learn business skills?