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  • Edythe Richards – Emotional intelligence

    August 13th, 2020
    Edythe Richards – Emotional Intelligence
    Edythe Richards
    Emotional intelligence

    Edythe Richards from A Top Career, talks about emotional intelligence and her work as a career counselor.

    As a career counselor, Edythe has helped thousands of individuals locate and sustain meaningful employment. Edythe’s passion is working with Career Changers – helping individuals identify their ideal careers and empowering them on their paths forward. Edythe is known for being an authentic, truthful, and humorous speaker, as well as an individual of tremendous goodwill and integrity.

    Visit Edythe’s website

    Edythe Richards – Emotional Intelligence
    TRANSCRIPT – PDF

    Tim Smal (host): Hi folks and welcome to the show today. My name is Tim Smal. As always, thanks for joining me on the show. My guest today is Edythe Richards. She holds a Master of Arts in Counseling (MA) and her passion is working with career changers, helping individuals identify their ideal careers and empowering them on their paths forward. She is a Global Career Development Professional (GCDF), a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW), a Gallup-certified Strengths coach, a Myers-Briggs Master Practitioner (MBTI®MP) and a certified My Everything DiSC® facilitator. Edythe, welcome to the show.

    Edythe Richards (guest): Hi Tim, thanks so much for having me.

    [00:57] Tim Smal: I’m really excited to have you on the show today. Edythe, tell me more about your work as a career coach.

    [01:06] Edythe Richards: Sure. So it’s not necessarily a career path I thought that I would be getting into, but it’s one I, sort of, found myself in, like a lot of people do. And what I really love about being a career counselor is actually working with the underdog – working with people who don’t fit neatly into one population or another. And these are the folks that I’m most passionate about helping. When I was working in the school system and at the employment centers, what I found was that there were a lot of resources available for people who were, for example, former military who were transitioning into civilian life, low-income populations, immigrant populations. There were a lot of resources and tools available for people who fell into certain populations, but the vast majority of job seekers didn’t fall into any of those populations and therefore did not have the scope of resources available to them. And I became very passionate about helping these people – many of whom are educated people with multiple degrees and just needed someone to guide them through this very confusing process of re-careering or finding the right career path for them.

    [02:33] Tim Smal: I’m really interested to know more about your own personal journey in discovering this area of work. So can you tell me more about how you stumbled upon this interest or how you came upon this passion because I’m sure there’s a backstory to, essentially, arriving at this point in your life where you realized “I really want to help people. I really want to make a difference in their lives, in terms of guiding them or helping them or assisting them on their path towards a career.”

    [03:08] Edythe Richards: I’m naturally a curious person and I’m very curious, in particular, about how people communicate. And when I graduated from college, I had some opportunities to travel – I had some opportunities to live abroad, travel abroad. And I just became very interested and curious about multicultural populations and diversity and just, people in general. I’ve always had an interest in psychology and helping people – motivating, empowering people and so I think that was what led me to the career path that I chose.

    So I went back to school and got a master’s degree in counseling. And then found myself in the career counseling field and had a great deal of success with that for many years. And ironically, I found myself being laid off – this is about, a little over three years ago now. And it’s just one of these cases where it’s… I just found myself in the same situation as so many of the clients I had worked with. And the thing that really struck me about that experience is: when I shared it with other people I know – or even acquaintances – the number of people who rushed to my defence and rushed to help me. And it really spoke to the quality of relationships that I had built over the years. And this was something I always stressed in my work is that: a large part of your success is going to be very dependent upon those relationships that you build along your journey.

    So to me, having experienced that myself… I mean, now I’m better able to truly empathize with many of the clients that I’ve helped over the years, having experienced the exact same things myself – the exact same range of emotions and frustrations… questioning yourself, questioning your abilities and how that translates into the job search. And then having been able to locate another job by practising my own advice. And I tell you, it is one of the… it’s one of the hardest things to do – to look at yourself in the mirror and see your flaws and find a way to overcome them. And I’m very fortunate that I was able to locate another position straight away.

    [05:45] Tim Smal: It’s not something that you really think about when you go into the working world, that perhaps one day you might lose your job – you know, that you might be laid off. I don’t think it’s something you really think about and I’m sure for many, many people it often takes them by surprise – it catches them off guard. And so even though they might be incredibly competent, highly-skilled, have lots of experience and qualifications – individuals are not quite prepared for that moment when they realize that they’re going to lose their job. And certainly in a time that we’re in now – with the coronavirus and so forth – it must surely be a feeling or a scenario that many people all over the world can relate to.

    [06:32] Edythe Richards: Definitely. And I have been… I’ve been saying this for years, that just the way the world is going, the way the economy is – people need to start looking at “the gig economy” and thinking about, you know, a side gig or something else, because these days of working for one organization for 30 years and, you know, getting a nice retirement pension and all of that – they’re slowly disappearing. So we, as individuals, have to take that onus on ourselves and think about our own well-being. And we’re in the driver’s seat now, so to speak.

    [07:13] Tim Smal: And you’ve certainly done a lot of work in your own personal capacity, if I consider all the different qualifications that you’ve gained over the years. I myself am very interested in the Gallup Strengthsfinder and the Myers-Briggs framework. So you’re a great example of somebody that has developed a side hustle, an entrepreneurial effort, your own business – and I’m sure you have lots of stories to tell about what it’s been like to set that up. But could you tell the listeners a little bit more about what that journey has been like for you, in terms of getting something off the ground as, essentially, a side hustle that has turned into a business over time, where you’ve been able to attend workshops and give lectures and talks and coaching, etc. What has that journey been like for you in terms of, essentially, moving away from the standard model of the safe job, the 9-to-5 and then immersing yourself in the somewhat scary world or the unknown terrain of starting your own endeavor?

    [08:20] Edythe Richards: It’s such a great question here and I’m really struggling in how to answer it because there’s so many different factors that go into this. I think the first one is that: I thought about it for many years before I actually took the plunge to go get a business license and set it up. So in that several year time frame before I actually took action, it was a lot of self-doubt and I found myself having to come to terms with those things. And then one day I just told myself “Hey, you know, I’m gonna jump off the deep end of the pool here and just get this thing started.” And then I felt like I was still – and still to a certain extent, feel this way and this is speaking of the Coronavirus pandemic and what the world is going through – there is so much of this anxiety in the world now. But, you know, when you’re acting out of fear or you’re trying to do something out of fear – make a living out of fear because you’re afraid of not having enough or losing your job or whatever it is – I’ve found I never get my best results that way.

    And speaking of Gallup Strengthsfinder, Myers-Briggs and all of these things I’m familiar with – quite a lot of assessments – I use a lot of assessments in my work. And what I keep going back to is: when you are working from a place of comfort yourself, when you are who you are most naturally and comfortably and you’re using those those skills, you’re not going to be operating out of a sense of fear, you’re going to be operating out of a sense of – in emotional intelligence world we call it “self-regard” you’re going to be confident in yourself and you’re going to be working from your own abilities. And that’s where you’re going to get your best results. And that has certainly been true for me.

    [10:23] Tim Smal: And one of the instruments or assessments that you use in your work is the EQ-i 2.0 instrument from Multi-Health Systems (MHS). And this is a really incredible instrument because it’s an inventory with a focus on learning competencies in the arena of emotional intelligence, or EQ for short. And from the research I’ve done, I have discovered that this is a really key area for you, in terms of the work that you’re doing, and that you believe that the key predictor of career success is emotional intelligence.

    [11:00] Edythe Richards: I really, really do and I use emotional intelligence a lot in all of my work. And there’s a lot of, I think, misunderstanding of what emotional intelligence really is. And how I like to sum it up is: you’re getting your emotions to work for you, rather than against you. And that requires that you have an understanding of your own emotions. So if you don’t even have an understanding of why you’re acting the way you’re acting, or insight into your own emotional landscape – we’re really not even going to be able to make any change in this area. So if you can’t state what you’re feeling and identify the emotions, that just says you’re unaware. So the first step, to me, in building emotional intelligence and practising emotional intelligence is that self-awareness piece – just being aware of what you’re feeling, why you’re feeling that way and then what you can do to either continue on the path that you’re on, or stop and take a different path.

    And then once you have this knowledge, you’re going to be better able to manage your emotions. And then you’re going to be better able to make decisions that are the right decisions for you. And you’re going to be able to communicate more effectively with people. Essentially, just that one step of being aware of what you’re putting out there into the world – what you’re feeling and what that looks like and sounds like to other people – that can be so helpful for everything that we do. And I think people underestimate that – they underestimate just taking the time to check-in with yourself, to be aware and understand what it is that’s going on with you at this particular moment.

    [13:03] Tim Smal: Yeah, that’s really interesting. And there are certainly a number of individuals who have done extensive research in this area. I’m sure you’re familiar with Daniel Goleman – he’s written a number of books. And I was watching one of his videos on YouTube and he was just talking about how important EQ really is, when you are looking at the work that people are doing in corporations, because EQ (or emotional intelligence) seems to be a greater predictor of success. And it seems to be even two times more important than IQ, which is quite a bold statement that Daniel made. But I’m sure it’s not unusual to hear statements that compare the importance of EQ to IQ. And we’re certainly not going to say that one is better than the other – individuals have all kinds of different strengths and we all need to work together in the world. But I think what I’m really excited about when it comes to emotional intelligence specifically – if we look at the EQ-i model – is that: we can learn and improve our skills. So even if we have certain competencies that we’re already good at – that we have a natural affinity for – we can work on other competencies and other skills that are perhaps weaker, if you will. And so if I’m not mistaken, the idea with developing one’s emotional intelligence is that: if you can develop these competencies across-the-board and improve your EQ as a whole, you can then combine that with your skills in the IQ domain and be a lot more effective – not only in your job role – but also in your relationships and your personal life too.

    [14:51] Edythe Richards: It’s so true. And to speak to what you mentioned about IQ versus EQ, I hear this argument a lot. And there is this perception out there that, you know, IQ is more important and then this one here I’ve heard that: being right is being smart. And I’m sure you – and everybody who’s tuning in too – has this experience of having worked with or been around some of the “smartest”, the quote-unquote “smartest people”, people with the highest IQ’s – the people who are very cognitively intelligent. And these people tend to fail miserably when it comes to life or to work. And, you know, back to self-awareness, it may be because they’re not aware of how they’re coming across – they may not be aware of their own biases. And we’ve heard this quote here that “smart people are very good at rationalizing things that they came to believe for ‘non-smart’ reasons.” And there’s so many different elements of emotional intelligence that this speaks to.

    You know, it really goes back to – talking about biases, talking about my own bias in this regard – I believe that: in life, whether it’s personal or professional, is all about emotions. And our emotions are what drives our behavior – if we let them. But on the other side of the table is the fact that we live in a data-driven world and people do place a lot more emphasis on numbers and quantitative data than they do on emotions. And that very word “emotions” tends to be scary to a lot of people.

    We aren’t really taught how to deal with our emotions when we’re growing up in school. You know, we can argue about whether emotions – emotional intelligence can be taught at school or by your parents or whomever… but emotions are essentially… they’re a basic part of us – they’re what makes us human. And it’s not going to help us to eliminate our emotions or suppress them. We need to learn to deal with them in a productive way and that’s essentially what emotional intelligence is all about here.

    [17:15] Tim Smal: Wow. Yeah, you’ve certainly given us a lot to think about there. And for the listeners that perhaps haven’t looked into this model, I do encourage them to perhaps just pop onto the internet and search for the EQ-i 2.0 model, just to have a look at it – it’s a really easy to understand colorful circle. And it’s just really interesting to me how all 15 of these different emotional skills or competencies are really important for everyone. No one can really say “Well, I don’t really need to explore optimism or stress tolerance or flexibility or problem-solving, etc.” All competencies are important and so we can all do some work on ourselves. And I’m really excited about exploring it more myself and seeing which areas I can work on because, you know, there are certainly going to be areas that I can improve on where I will definitely experience, you know, change in my life and be able to work better with others and, essentially, just lead a better life.

    Because there might be some blind spots – I guess, we all have those blind spots. And I think that’s what a model like this really helps us to explore. And we certainly don’t have to feel bad if we have lower scores in certain areas because, of course, there are going to be natural areas that we are strong in and that’s really, really awesome – much like in the other models like the Gallup Strengthsfinder, for example. But what I really like about this model – the EQ-i 2.0 – is that we can actually improve, we can grow, we can work on these competencies.

    And I guess, you know, in terms of wrapping up the show I think that’s what I’d really like to just ask you is that: do you believe that, if an individual explores emotional intelligence and they work on these different competencies, that they ultimately will experience more success in their life? Whether they consider that success to be in terms of a business or a career or perhaps, in terms of their relationships or their general well-being – do you feel as if the more effort they put into doing this emotional intelligence work, that on the other side of that, there are going to be some rewards for them, in terms of success in life – in terms of whatever that means to them as an individual?

    [19:34] Edythe Richards: Yeah, I really do. And again, it does need to be intentional and it does need to be paired with goals of what it is that you’re looking to achieve. But along those lines, it’s important to remember that it does not measure whether we are a good and ethical person or not. So that’s another misunderstanding of what emotional intelligence actually is – it doesn’t measure someone’s ability to be a good person. But by developing our emotional intelligence, [absolutely] paired with goals and intentional goal setting, it can absolutely help us to achieve more and to lead a better and happier life.

    [20:17] Tim Smal: Interesting. Well, perhaps this is a good time in our discussion for you to just let the listeners know how they can reach out to you. Perhaps some of the listeners would like to take this assessment or get in touch with you. So where’s the best place for them to find you?

    [20:34] Edythe Richards: Sure. I’d love for them to reach out to me on my website, which is atopcareer.com

    [20:47] Tim Smal: Great. Well, it’s been really wonderful speaking with you today. I’m sure the listeners have really learned a lot from you. And before we wrap up, I just wanted to mention that, of course, you do have a number of different podcasts that the listeners can check out. So can you just tell the listeners where they can find you and how they can get hold of you and what your plans are, in terms of podcasts for the future?

    [21:13] Edythe Richards: Sure. So I have a weekly podcast series called “Myers-Briggs Question Corner” and for the listeners out there tuning in, if you do have a question related to Personality Type Theory or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®, I would love for you to get in touch and I’d be glad to feature your question on air. I also have another series in the works right now called “EQ at Work” and this one is focusing on emotional intelligence.

    [21:44] Tim Smal: Wonderful. Well, Edythe it’s been really awesome speaking with you today. I really appreciate your time and I really look forward to following your work in the future and seeing what you get up to. I’m a big fan of your podcasts and I really enjoy all the work that you do. So thanks again for joining me today on the show – I’m sure the listeners really appreciate you coming on and chatting with us. So yeah, thanks again and I look forward to speaking with you again in the future.

    [22:15] Edythe Richards: Great, thanks so much, it’s really been a pleasure talking to you. And, you know, I appreciate all the kudos too – so yeah, thanks very much. Have a great rest of the day.

  • Kristin Meekhof – A Widow’s Guide To Healing

    June 8th, 2020
    Kristin Meekhof
    Kristin Meekhof
    Healing from grief and loss

    Kristin Meekhof, a resilience and gratitude expert, talks about healing from grief and loss.

    Kristin is a speaker, writer, and author. She spoke at the 2017 Harvard Medical School’s writing conference, and appeared at the United Nations headquarters. Kristin wrote about the healing power of gratitude for the “Live Happy” book and is the co-author of the best-selling book “A Widow’s Guide To Healing.” Kristin is a licensed master’s level social worker with twenty years of clinical experience.

    Visit Kristin’s website

    Kristin Meekhof interview on The Tim Smal Show
    TRANSCRIPT – PDF

    Tim Smal (host): Hi everyone and welcome to the show. My name is Tim Smal. Thanks for joining me today. My guest on the show today is Kristin Meekhof. She is a resilience and gratitude expert. She’s a speaker, writer and author. She co-authored the book “A Widow’s Guide To Healing” with James Windell. So Kristin, welcome to the show.

    Kristin Meekhof (guest): Thank you so very much Tim, it’s an honour to be here.

    [00:29] Tim Smal: Well Kristin, you certainly have an interest in how people deal with adversity. So would you mind just telling the listeners a little bit about your own life story, to kick off the show today?

    [00:40] Kristin Meekhof: Sure, well, let’s start – I can go all the way back to 1974. I don’t know my birthday and I’m probably one of the few of the people that you may have had as podcasts guests that don’t know their birthday. But I was born in South Korea and I was orphaned and so there wasn’t a birth date assigned to me. And I was adopted by my parents James and Nancy in the United States in June. And so I came about four months later to the United States. And then in ’78, I became a naturalized citizen of the United States of America. And unfortunately, in ’79, my father died – he was 30, from cancer.

    And so that changed everything for me, really. I moved in with my mother (it was just her and I) to Grand Rapids, Michigan of all places – that’s where her family was and my father’s family. And I was very, very fortunate from there to be able to attend Kalamazoo College and then graduate school at the University of Michigan. And I then went on to write the book, as you mentioned, “A Widow’s Guide To Healing.” So that’s about me in a nutshell, thank you for having me.

    [01:55] Tim Smal: Thanks for sharing your story, Kristin. Now, this book that you authored has been a big part of your life journey and I would love it if you could tell the listeners a little bit more about the book and of course, why you wrote it.

    [02:09] Kristin Meekhof: Unfortunately in 2007 my husband died from adrenal cancer. I spent three years after, reading everything I could about grief and loss. And I couldn’t find a book, really, that had the narratives of women – they would mention loss here and there, but it didn’t really capture those narratives that I was looking for of how women not only survived, but how they coped with their loss and how they were able to heal.

    And I remember reading, shortly after my husband died, something from C.S. Lewis that said “We read to know that we’re less alone.” And I couldn’t agree more with that quote. And I thought “If I can begin to learn from other women – I didn’t care about their background, where they lived, the cause of death, their age, education, etc. – I thought it would be helpful for other women who might be going through something similar, as far as learning to heal after loss.”

    And so I spent three to four years interviewing as many widows as I could, to put their stories together. I travelled all over the globe: I went to Kenya – Nairobi specifically, a slum called Kibera, where widows live on less than $1 a day. I went to the UK. I went all over the United States – to the backwoods of Montana to Boston, Massachusetts to interview a widow whose husband died on 9/11, to women who live in my hometown Michigan. And just really learned how to capture their stories and hopefully help others, give them a sense of resilience when they read the book.

    And there’s also practical advice in the book. So one doesn’t have to read every single chapter like a typical book, you can go right to whatever chapter that you’re wanting to know about – whether it’s “solo parenting” or “finances” or “how to cope everyday in the very beginning” – there’s something for everyone in it.

    [04:02] Tim Smal: Yeah and I love the way that the book has been described. So on amazon.com (where you can buy the book) it’s described as: “An inspiring, accessible and empowering guide for how to navigate the unique grief and challenges of widowhood and create a hopeful future.” So a really lovely description.

    Now with your travels around the world, do you have some stories that you could share with the listeners about widows that you met and their stories that really impacted you?

    [04:33] Kristin Meekhof: Sure. I think one of the most memorable conversations I had, I spent three days specifically with a widow who lives in the slum, as I said called Kibera – it’s in Kenya. And the UN actually has deemed it “one of the most dangerous places for women and young children to live” because of the lack of running water, the lack of electricity, the violence and other things that make it very unsafe for women and children to live there.

    And yet this woman that I spent about 3 days with, she really exemplified grace. And I held her baby for her as she did some other things during the day and she was always so, so gracious and grateful to me. She always said “thank you” and really exemplified true, true beauty.

    And I’ve never actually met anyone like her – I’ve met hundreds and hundreds of women, but no one as special as her and as brave and courageous as her. And her story has stuck with me. She gave me a bracelet, actually, that she made that I wear from time to time and I keep near me – it just reminds me of her and my time in Kenya. And so that’s really a story that’s always resonated with me and really has motivated me to continue when things get tough.

    [05:55] Tim Smal: And I think it’s really commendable that you had the opportunity to travel around the world and meet with different women in order to write your book. And subsequently you actually had the opportunity, a few years ago, to appear at the United Nations. Could you tell us more about that experience?

    [06:11] Kristin Meekhof: Yeah, so I’ve been there three times, I think – yeah, three times. So I was invited actually by Lord Loomba (Rajinder Paul Loomba) the first time. He’s from India and he lives primarily in the UK. His mother was a widow very early on in his childhood. And he noticed how widows were treated in India and that she was no longer allowed to wear the bindi, she couldn’t wear bright coloured clothing – she wasn’t even allowed at his wedding because widows are viewed as a curse to a new couple. And so he has made it his life’s work actually to help and empower widows at an economic level and a social level. And he occasionally goes to the UN as an ambassador.

    And so I had the great pleasure and honour of, not only meeting him before I went to Africa, but then again in New York City at the UN Headquarters and I was able to introduce him as a speaker – it was the privilege of a lifetime. I was also there because I wrote a chapter in a book: the “Live Happy” book (Ten Practices for Choosing Joy) about gratitude. Many other people are in it: Ariana Huffington, Alanis Morissette, Jason Mraz, some other notable writers and then myself. And that book “Live Happy” was actually introduced at the UN bookstore for World Happiness Day. So I was introduced as an author or a contributor to that book – I believe it’s still there. And when I go to the UN, it’s for the conference on the status of women. I go as a voice to help to elevate and to learn about women empowerment and how to help them throughout the globe and what they’re doing and on a microfinance level as well.

    [07:51] Tim Smal: Ah, sounds like a really incredible experience. And thanks for telling us about the “Live Happy” book – I’m certainly not surprised at all to hear that Jason Mraz was featured in that book… he’s a very cheerful chap!

    [08:03] Kristin Meekhof: It’s interesting, you know – when I wrote the chapter, I didn’t know who was going to be in it. So when I got the book, I was really surprised that my piece was included. So it’s a huge honour.

    [08:17] Tim Smal: Yeah and speaking of surprises, I guess if we look back on your life: you graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Kalamazoo College, with a major in psychology. and then you went on to complete your Clinical Masters in Social Work at the University of Michigan. So you’ve become a licensed social worker, but I imagine back in those days you probably weren’t thinking about being an author. Has that been a bit of a surprise to you – what has your journey been like, in essentially moving from your studies through to the work you’re doing today?

    [08:52] Kristin Meekhof: Yes, it’s a huge surprise. Never in a million years did I think I’d be speaking with you. And I know that when we first talked, I asked how you found me and it was because you saw me on CNN – I was on CNN speaking about resilience. So the path that I chose is something that I never guessed in a million years. And I look back at it and I say “even though I had a master’s degree in social work, really nothing prepared me for the loss of my husband.” I was 33 at the time in 2007. And it was only because I have always believed that the narratives and learning from other narratives of women can change the trajectory of one’s life and in particular, one’s healing after loss – regardless of what the loss is. And that’s why I decided to write the book. But never, never did I think I would be speaking about a book I wrote.

    [09:49] Tim Smal: Well, speaking about loss, it’s certainly an interesting time at the moment in the world with the coronavirus and everything surrounding that. People are certainly experiencing loss in a variety of different forms. Now, you’ve been speaking about healing and that healing is possible – can you talk about resilience and how that can contribute to healing during difficult times?

    [10:15] Kristin Meekhof: So I think that resilience is really something that one has to look at in small steps. Sometimes it’s difficult to take a big leap towards one’s healing after your life has been hit by a loss – whether it’s an economic loss, an emotional loss, or a death, or a relationship loss, or a career loss, whatever it is – that there’s a point at which it is possible to begin to start to take small steps to rebuild one’s life. It doesn’t have to be a big leap and that’s part of just taking that initial first step, really, is part of healing and part of resilience.

    And so when I do individual coaching with clients about resilience – and it doesn’t have to be necessarily, the loss of a spouse – but nearly everyone I know has experienced some type of loss. And I work to help them to understand that small steps really do add up to significant changes later on that can help to put them on the road of healing and also to rebuild and restart and start a new life.

    And I think in the time of COVID-19, people are experiencing loss on a level like nothing else has ever happened before. And it’s very scary and fearful. And it’s okay to ask for help, to ask for guidance.

    [11:38] Tim Smal: So would you say that developing skills like staying positive, having a gratitude journal or even a gratitude buddy – these are skills that one can practice to essentially experience healing and build resilience?

    [11:55] Kristin Meekhof: Yes. You know, I talked about getting “a gratitude buddy” on CNN and I got some weird comments after that – I mean, not on the show directly, but I mean, after the segment aired. And what it is: it’s nice to have a time in which somebody checks in with you and sometimes just shifting your focus to something that’s going well, is a way to see your day in your life through a different lens. And that small micro shift in changing one’s perspective can make all the difference.

    And so “a gratitude buddy” really – you know, is someone to share things with. It’s someone that you sharing things that are in common with, because you both want to have a positive outlook. And not everybody has a good day all the time – that’s not what it’s about. But it’s really – especially now – nice to remember that some things do go well and there are some things that are positive to take note of.

    And it’s very simple things: this morning I went for a morning run and that was something that I’m very grateful for, you know – the sun is out here and it was peaceful. So you know, it doesn’t have to be huge accomplishments to make it on to your gratitude list.

    [13:04] Tim Smal: Yeah and I guess every little bit counts, right? If you’re spending time with friends (in terms of social support), if you’re finding a way to be creative, to express yourself, perhaps you’re learning how to meditate or speak to yourself with compassion… as you build all these skills, you’re essentially growing your mind to be stronger and more resilient, right?

    [13:26] Kristin Meekhof: Yes and sometimes, you know, it’s very surprising because it’s not until we look back later that we realise how those small steps added up. So meditation is very powerful: we know from scientific studies that the minds of – or the brains of those who meditate, the grey matter looks different. And my dear friend, Dr. Deepak Chopra, has studied this extensively, as have others. It’s well-documented that meditation really is a portal to healing and also to happiness.

    [13:58] Tim Smal: Yeah, meditation is definitely one of those important skills. And everybody can practice it in slightly different ways. Because as long as you are ultimately, stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system and you’re slowing your body down and you’re being present in the moment with whatever it is that you’re doing – whether you’re sitting outside or perhaps even just listening to some music… whatever you find relaxing – it’s doing a lot of good work for your body. It’s like you’re teaching your body to be present-focused and to really be grateful ultimately, for the life that you have.

    [14:32] Kristin Meekhof: Absolutely. And everybody has a different way of doing it. And I think that, you know, find what works for you and continue to look for that, if the first time that you tried something didn’t work. There’s various ways people meditate – various apps, for example, that one can use and you don’t even need one. You know, I started and I didn’t have an app, I didn’t have a specific place in mind I was gonna do it – I just started in my living room one morning. And it is something that I started before the book came out and it’s really changed the way that I’ve been able to experience things.

    [15:11] Tim Smal: Yeah, I like the way that you put that. And if any of the listeners are wanting to reach out to you and find out more about your story, of course, they can visit your website at kristinmeekhof.com – but I wanted to recommend a video to them which is your talk that you gave at Rochester Hills public library and that’s on YouTube. It’s a 45-minute talk and you do dive quite deep into a lot of information around the topic that we’re talking on. What was the purpose of that talk, specifically – I’m just trying to get some context?

    [15:41] Kristin Meekhof: So, that in Rochester, Michigan, it is a situation that I was invited to because widows wanted to learn from me about ways to heal. So the audience were primarily widows and what really struck me about that – I offered tips for healing – is that, I believe the camera was off at this point during the Q&A… I can’t remember because I’ve done so many things since then.

    But I remember afterwards, a gentleman walked up to me and his wife was several feet behind her and he said “I wanted to bring my wife here, because I knew that I’m going to die before her and I wanted her to know how to heal afterwards.” I’ll always remember that because it really was so bittersweet that moment, that he was offering her – my book and this talk that I was doing, as a way to help her beyond the time that she would have with him. And so that’s really something that I’ve taken with me.

    I take something with me from every single thing that I’ve done – and often something very unexpected, you know, something that you don’t necessarily think is going to happen to you or something that someone is gonna say and that’s the one thing I remember from that talk.

    [17:00] Tim Smal: Wow, well thanks for sharing that story – that’s really amazing. I’m sure you’ve done a lot of interviews over the years and so you’ve spoken about the topic a lot. But I suppose as time goes by, you certainly are probably gaining new insights or even learning new lessons perhaps, for a new book that you might be writing in the future… I’m not sure. But at this point in time, do you perhaps have any recent insights or takeaways for the listeners that you’ve been thinking about in recent times?

    [17:31] Kristin Meekhof: I think one of the takeaways that I have is that – well, certainly, nobody predicted a pandemic – but I think one of the takeaways is that: healing after any loss, whether it’s a health issue, or a financial issue, a relationship issue, a personal issue that crossed a boundary for you… that it is possible.

    And I think that that’s a really important message now because lots of people are very fearful – they don’t know what the next steps are, they don’t know if they can rebuild their life, they don’t see that hope for their lifestyle to continue the way it once was before COVID. And so because of that big change that affected at all of us, I think that it’s important, now more than ever, to express the message that healing is possible.

    [18:26] Tim Smal: Wow, thanks for sharing – that’s really helpful. And you certainly have a number of really useful resources on your website, including lovely articles that the listeners can get hold of. So once again you’re welcome to visit Kristin’s website at kristinmeekhof.com

    Kristin, I thank you so much for joining us today. I hope the next time that you visit Africa that you will give South Africa a visit.

    [18:52] Kristin Meekhof: I will. I really thank you for this opportunity – it’s beyond anything that I thought would ever happen, that I would be speaking with you. And thank you for finding me.

    [19:04] Tim Smal: Yeah, thanks so much Kristin. Have a lovely day and I look forward to actually reading your book, because I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. But I’ll certainly follow all of your activities online and I encourage the listeners to do so too.

    [19:17] Kristin Meekhof: Thank you so much, I really appreciate this Tim. My best to you and your family.

  • Frank James – Comedy sketches based on MBTI

    May 14th, 2020
    Frank James
    Frank James
    Comedy sketches based on MBTI®

    Frank James talks about his comedy sketches based on The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®.

    Frank is a video creator on YouTube who focuses on the arena of personality. He creates comedy sketches based on two personality models, namely Meyers-Briggs and the Enneagram. His YouTube channel has grown considerably since it’s inception, as Frank enjoys taking information related to personality typology and making it accessible and fun for his audience.

    Visit Frank’s website

    Frank James
    TRANSCRIPT – pdf

    Tim Smal (host): Hi folks and welcome to the show. My name is Tim Smal and my guest today is Frank James. Frank has a YouTube channel where he does personality comedy sketches, so we’ll be chatting to him today about those videos. Frank, welcome to the show.

    Frank James (guest): Tim, thank you so much for having me. I am really looking forward to having a conversation with you.

    [00:25] Tim Smal: Awesome. Now Frank, you’re very into “personality typology.” Could you tell the listeners about what that is, and why you’re interested in it.

    [00:35] Frank James: Yeah. So typology is a way of, basically, grouping people based on… different typology systems have different ways that they do this, so I focused mostly on Myers-Briggs. And the way that that categorises people is, not so much based on traits or behaviour, but is based on inclinations of how people see the world, how they perceive things and then how they make decisions. So that’s Myers-Briggs. There’s also other typology systems that we can get into – they have different different methods of typing people, but yeah, that’s my bread and butter, Myers Briggs.

    [01:22] Tim Smal: Yeah, so Myers-Briggs has 16 different personality types and you base a lot of your comedy sketches on Myers-Briggs. Can you tell us more about these comedy sketches?

    [01:36] Frank James: Yeah. So I mean, it’s just taking any kind of situation that people could maybe relate to, or maybe a parody of something. And I look for concepts for videos where it’s like, you can see a wide breadth of reactions to one thing or one situation. And it all started back with “the types at a job interview”: basically, the 16 different ways that you could ruin a job interview – the 16 ways that you would not want to do a job interview, blowing these personality types a little bit out of proportion.

    [02:17] Tim Smal: Yeah, you’ve done a couple of really good sketches. So “16 personalities at a job interview”, “on a coffee date”, “calling customer service”, “playing Monopoly”, “at the doctor’s office” – even some more recent variations like “social distancing”, “as moms in quarantine” and even “16 personalities react to 16 personalities”… you gotta love that one, hey?

    [02:43] Frank James: Yeah, I was really proud of that one… the layers going into it. I think it’s a general kind of genre on YouTube to make videos like “types of… blah blah blah.” So then, just bringing that to Myers-Briggs, you got 16 personalities built in – so in some ways, it does part of the work for you.

    [03:08] Tim Smal: Now according to Myers-Briggs, I identify with the type “ENFP”, so whenever I watch your videos, I always have to laugh when the ENFP comes up. So for example, in the 16 personalities at a job interview sketch, if I can remember correctly, the ENFP gets questioned about all the gaps on his resume. I always have to laugh at the ENFP because I can really relate to that. I think there was another video… I can’t remember which one now, but I always love the way ENFP dresses – it’s always a very, kind of a, casual, carefree kind of, dress sense, if you will. So would you be able to, kind of, type me, in a way, just to give an example to the listeners of what an ENFP would be like as an individual?

    [03:52] Frank James: Yeah. In the most broad senses, an ENFP is gonna be someone who is generally gonna get bored easily. They always want new things – and not new things like in the physical world, but they always want to be like, latching onto, kind of, newer… new abstract things. Like you with your podcast: you have a bunch of different guests that you bring on from all walks of life, because you just want to keep gathering these different ideas really.

    And the second part of your personality, is that, it’s all about, what do you like – it’s very subjective. Like, “what do you think is good, what do you like?” So the ENFP is very fun. They’re generally fun people to be around, because they’re always going from one thing to the next and they’re always all about “having a good time for themselves”, “creating a good vibe within themselves” that then can spread to other people. So I know that’s like, a very general start to it.

    But the other side of the ENFP, like the weakness is that, they are really not good at organising. When it comes to things in the actual physical world, you probably will struggle with just getting it all in order. No one really likes doing chores, a lot of people struggle with it. But for an ENFP, that’s like their weak spot – is just getting the cabinets organised or making the bed. So yeah, that’s my sketch of an ENFP.

    [05:25] Tim Smal: Yeah and I find all those chores so boring – that’s the main reason why I don’t want to do them, because I just find them so boring. And I guess that’s part of my personality, because I am somebody that loves fun. And I guess that’s why I’m also just attracted to your channel because you’re taking something like “personality” and you’re turning it into something fun and relatable. So for the folks that have never really looked into this, they can go and watch your videos and start to learn about, what some might consider a fairly serious topic – but have a lot of fun with it right?

    [05:57] Frank James: Yeah and I think that is the way to go about it when it comes to something like this. Because before I did “personality types”, or before I had done the comedy sketches, I had been on YouTube for a while, doing more like “educational kind of videos”– which I still do now, but I was doing basically that before. And you have to get someone who already wants to learn to click on a video where I am in a bit more of a “teaching mode.”

    But when it’s a comedy sketch – yeah, they’re just able to laugh at it. But then they could pick up on – I mean, they’re just stereotypes, basically – but they can pick up on that to begin with and then be like “Oh, that type reminds me of my brother or my husband or whatever.” And then from there, they can be like “Well, let me read a little bit more about this. Let me learn what makes this type like this, what makes it different than other types.”

    So yeah, you’re right there, that it’s a good way of bringing people in. And maybe they just watch it for a laugh, but maybe it can actually – in a roundabout way – teach them a thing or two, or at least lead them to wanting to learn more.

    [07:10] Tim Smal: Yeah, your work is certainly very entertaining and I always look forward to watching the latest sketch that comes out. So for example, today you released “16 personalities up all night” which was pretty funny, because I actually didn’t sleep very well last night. So I was watching it and I think the ENFP kicked off the show. And he was talking about going to sleep and then he remembered that he had to feed his cat. And I was just laughing because I have a cat and I was like “Yeah, ENFP starting off the show today.”

    [07:40] Frank James: Yeah, the ENFP is always a good one to start with because we usually… so me and Holly, my writing partner, will usually give ENFP the wildest, goofiest joke or scenario. So yeah, it’s funny that you haven’t been sleeping well – I’ve haven’t been sleeping well either, so that’s, sort of, where it came from, the idea.

    [08:04] Tim Smal: Well, let’s chat a little bit about the scriptwriting process. When you started doing these sketches, I imagine you were writing the scripts on your own and then somewhere along the way, you got Holly to start helping you writing the scripts. Tell us more about what that process has been like for you.

    [08:21] Frank James: Yeah, so Holly has been a viewer of the channel for a while and then we became friends. When she started watching I had, I don’t know, maybe 15 thousand subscribers – which sounds like a lot, but in practice on YouTube that’s still a very small channel. So we got to know each other and yeah, I did start writing the sketches just all on my own. And one day she sent me a script, without me having ever, you know, said “Hey, write a script.” And she’s like “Hey, why don’t you see if you like this, if you want it – go ahead and do it.”

    And that was the “16 personalities as substitute teachers” because she’s a teacher, so she was like “I’ll just write what I know.” And it went really well – people loved it. I liked having someone to work with. So I said to her “Hey, why don’t we keep doing this.” And so now every week we have a schedule of talking about what we’re gonna do next week. She goes away, writes a draft, comes back, we go over it. I edit it and then record it and we do it all over again. So it’s been a great partnership so far… I don’t know why I said “so far”, but I’m sure it’ll be great for a long time.

    [09:37] Tim Smal: And have you enjoyed having the opportunity to, essentially, have yourself freed up to focus a little bit more on the acting side of things?

    [09:46] Frank James: Yeah. See, that is the great thing about it, is just the extra time to work on other things. And I also do one to two other videos on my channel a week, which may or may not be comedy – sometimes I do, you know, like I said before, more “educational videos.” So yeah, being able to delegate the script out to someone else has been a great time saver.

    Plus I find, I don’t know what it is, but I find that I work better when I have a starting point. When someone else gives me a script, it’s just easier for me to come up with more jokes too. Because by the end of it, a script can be… it changes, but sometimes it’s 30 – 50% stuff that I came up with and it’s just easier for me to have a starting point that someone else started. Something about my personality type – I wonder what that is, I don’t know…

    [10:44] Tim Smal: Well yeah, speaking about your personality type, what exactly do you identify as, Mr Frank James?

    [10:51] Frank James: Well, as far as I can tell, “INFJ” is my personality type. I feel embarrassed talking about it and I don’t bring it up in real life. Because even though INFJ is quote-unquote “the rarest type” it’s, sort of, like the type almost everyone gets on the tests – you know, with some exceptions. So it makes me feel like… I don’t want to sound like I’m just… I don’t know… A lot of people get attracted to “the INFJ’s are special, INFJ’s are rare thing” and I have moved past that, so I don’t really talk about it. I’ve never talked about the rarity or “special thing.” And so I guess, that also leads me to just not bring it up much.

    But I think when you can actually look at each type for what they are, and forget about the whole “rarity thing” and like, why each type is so “awesome and special” and actually look at what the types mean… While it can like rub away some of the magic of it, it actually makes it a lot more useful. So the short answer is INFJ to your question.

    [11:58] Tim Smal: Well, I guess that’s where it gets really interesting and what makes MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) really interesting, is that their whole concept is that there are eight different cognitive functions. And each person, essentially, has four cognitive functions operating in their brain, I guess. So the theory behind MBTI is that, each of us has a ‘dominant function’ and an ‘auxiliary function’. So those I guess, are the two strongest ones. And then a ‘tertiary’ and an ‘inferior function – which I guess, are on the lower side. And all four of those work together to, essentially, create a framework for your personality.

    And that’s why I really like MBTI, because if I think of myself as an ENFP, I’m leading with a dominant function of extroverted intuition, so that’s something that I can really relate to. And I guess with you as an INFJ – you’ll just have to remind me of the dominant function, but perhaps you can speak a little bit about your experience with the cognitive functions of the INFJ.

    [13:00] Frank James: Yeah and this all goes back to Carl Jung who first came up with these functions in his book “Psychological Types.” So he laid out the 8 different types and then Myers and Briggs, in the early 1900’s – it was the 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, something like that – they took his theory, which honestly, was not very fleshed out. That work “Psychological Types” is very general and difficult to use, like to type people or whatever. So Myers and Briggs took that and made it into a system with the 16 types and made it a bit more structured.

    So you mentioned we all have four… you explained it very well – we all have four cognitive functions. We all have “thinking”, “feeling”, “intuition” and “sensing” and we use all four.

    And so thinking and feeling are the ways you make decisions. Thinking being “what works, what makes sense” and feeling being “what is good, what do I like, what do others like.” And emotion is part of feeling, but it’s not really the same thing.

    Then sensing and intuition are how we perceive the world. And sensing being the actual concrete world – intuition being the abstract world of meanings, patterns and concepts.

    So you and I being “lead intuitive”… so the INFJ’s dominant function is introverted intuition. Yours, the ENFP, is extroverted intuition. So our main way of perceiving the world for both of us is abstract. But mine is “introverted”, meaning: I’m trying to like, limit the number of meanings I see – I’m trying to draw everything down into like, one abstract pattern or concept, that is kind of, subjective. So it’s something that I’m just coming up with for myself.

    Whereas, you being extraverted with the intuition, you’re trying to find as many different patterns and abstract connections and meanings as possible – it’s not personal to you, so you’re just going from thing to thing to thing, trying to see how everything is connected. But you’re trying to find as many connections as possible. So like, I brought up the example before just like with the radio show: you’re just trying to see as many different meanings out there that people have – as many different patterns and connections with what people do in the world.

    Yeah so, I mean, it sounds a bit hard to understand at first – when we talk about intuition, because those words have common meanings that don’t mean what the Myers-Briggs terms actually mean. But when you actually break it down, it’s pretty simple: like perceiving the world first and foremost in an abstract way – like the physical world, the concrete world doesn’t matter as much as the meaning underneath it… the patterns underneath it.

    [16:08] Tim Smal: Yeah and I’m certainly fond of some of the resources out there today that help to simplify the concepts or, essentially, introduce newbies to the concepts of Myers-Briggs. So I’m not sure if you’ve been to truity.com but they seem to have a very easy-to-understand approach – nice pictures, easy wording and you can do the tests there. So I always use this as a starting point if I’m trying to speak to friends or family who really haven’t had any experience in personality typology. So do you find these various resources like truity.com for example quite helpful?

    [16:44] Frank James: So I haven’t dug deep into truity.com as an example, because every site or every teacher of typology is gonna have a slightly different approach, which is one of the problems of typology: is that there’s no unifying theory – it’s basically like, everyone doing their own thing. But going to somewhere like truity.com is a good place to get your bearings and at least get started.

    And what I always tell people is that you have to go out there and look at all these different places you could learn typology and just find something that makes sense for you. Because everyone is teaching something slightly different, slightly different methodology and different goals too – like what they think typology should be used for. And you’ve got to do something that is gonna make sense for you ultimately.

    [17:42] Tim Smal: Yeah and I guess one of the reasons why I found typology so interesting is that it’s helped me to understand other people. So I think we spoke about this – or we touched on it a little bit earlier – but all of a sudden, it starts to make sense why your friends behave the way that they do. Because if somebody is leading with a dominant function of say, extraverted sensing, that would be really different to both myself and you.

    So all of a sudden, you start to understand why people behave in the ways that they do. And so, what I really enjoy about it is: looking at my friends or colleagues or acquaintances and saying “Oh OK, so that behaviour that I thought was a little bit weird, or a little bit strange or not quite ‘my scene’ is actually completely understandable.” So if you think of a personality like an ESTP or an ENTJ for example, I would perhaps have looked at their behaviour and gone “Wow, like, I’m not quite sure what that’s all about.” And now I can really understand why they behave the way they do.

    [18:39] Frank James: Right, yeah exactly. I’ve found that since I’ve gotten into typology, I’ve just become way more patient with people because I realise that, it’s not that they’re weird – it’s just that they have a different personality. And I think, in practical terms, what I have seen this help the most with, are people who are, kind of, argumentative – people who are thinkers. You know, you and I, we’re feeling types, so we can engage in the logic, but it’s not our preferred way of making decisions or talking about what we should do.

    So when people come along who are thinkers, and thinkers tend to be more blunt, it used to like, really upset me – it used to make me think “Wow, this person is kind of a jerk” but now I just realise “Oh, no, that’s just how they do things.” And they expect me to come back at them and engage in the logic. So I’ve just started doing that. It’s almost like you’re trusting the math – it doesn’t feel right in the moment, like “Oh man, I really don’t like engaging in debate. I don’t like doing things that I’m not used to doing. I don’t prefer talking in this more blunt, logical way, but I’m just gonna trust that that’s what this person wants me to do – hey, it turns out it was right. All I had to do was ‘talk their language’ and I got along a lot better with them.”

    Yeah, so that’s what I think typology can really unlock for everyone: is this better understanding of people. And even like, you talked about an ESTP – someone who has lead extraverted sensing… now an ESTP is the exact opposite type from me. So I would have thought before “Oh, you know, how can I relate to this person?” But now looking into it further, I realise “Even though they’re the opposite type, we have all of the same cognitive functions.” So in a way, they’re who I should be trying to learn things from, because they can do things that I don’t do well. Their dominant function is my inferior function, so I need to figure out how to do what they do, a bit more.

    And I never expected that – I thought it was just some kind of arcane knowledge so I could group people together in my mind and make sense of why some people were the same, why some people were different. But it’s actually had a very practical impact on how I interact with others.

    [21:10] Tim Smal: Yeah and I love the way that you put that, because sometimes when I’ve tried to speak to friends in my city about typology, they’re not always that interested. They might say “Well, I’m not really into that stuff and I don’t like putting people in boxes.” But in terms of how you described the last question I asked you, for me that’s what I get really excited about, is this idea that: I can actually connect better with the people around me.

    Because I can see with all my friends – they’ve got vastly different personalities. And for a long time it completely baffled me, you know, trying to understand the INTJ or the ISTP, or what not. And now that I have a better understanding, I can connect better with them – have better relationships and do really awesome work with them, when I not only have a better understanding of their cognitive functions and how their brains work, how they interact with the world – but also from my own perspective, in terms of my own personality.

    And for me, when I think about those possibilities, in terms of minimising conflict and friction and misunderstanding… and maximizing “awesomeness” – I just get really excited, man.

    [22:17] Frank James: Yeah, definitely. I think that’s the potential that people miss out on. And you bring up a good point, like people say “I don’t want to put people in boxes. Man, people aren’t like that”, because they don’t really understand what’s going on. And yeah, to a degree, you put people in a quote-unquote “box” when you give them a type, but just because someone is a feeler, for example, doesn’t mean that they don’t think. Everyone does everything.

    And these preferences that we’re talking about – they’re not 100% of the time that you prefer one thing over the other… it might only be like 55% of the time, but it’s still a preference. It’s like, just because you’re right-handed, doesn’t mean that you don’t have a left-hand. So once people can understand that – that we’re not actually putting people in boxes – we’re just trying to understand their preferences… that can be like, the gateway to opening them up to receiving it.

    But I totally relate to what you’re talking about: people like… they’re not open to it, either because of the “box thing” or because MBTI is not scientific. Some people don’t have a very good understanding of it, so they think it’s just like a horoscope. And that is all wrong – those perspectives are based on like, just not a very deep understanding of what typology is and what it can do for people.

    [23:40] Tim Smal: Yeah and I can certainly understand the skeptic’s point of view, because if they are thinking to themselves “Well, you gonna put me in a box – I’m just like the next person and the next person… where is the diversity?” But if you think about it, I could meet somebody else who is an ENFP and they might identify with a different type on the Enneagram or a different outcome on the Big Five Personality Test [different personality typology models]. There’s still a lot of variety and there’s still a lot of scope for diversity even within say, an ENFP.

    And what’s also really interesting is that – and I’m sure you would agree with me, that: no one personality is better than the next personality. It’s not like “this one is better than that one or what not.” Because ultimately, that’s the way you were born – you have this personality… you come into the world and you experience the world a certain way. And so each personality, I guess, has ‘pros and cons’ – if you wanna put it that way. Like you have your “good side” when you’re fully actualized, and you have your, sort of, “darker side”, if you will, or your weaker side, that you can work on, if you become more self-aware. And so it isn’t really a competition and no two people really are the same. But the frameworks just help us to, essentially, lead better lives, right?

    [24:46] Frank James: Yeah. Well, one of the interesting things is, you can think of it like: instead of, necessarily, a good side or bad side – and you might even think of these preferences as being more like “What do I feel most responsible for? Do I feel responsible for making decisions when it comes to a value system with feeling? Or do I feel responsible for making decisions and making sure they’re logical? Do I feel responsible for the facts, which are the sensory observations? Or do I feel responsible for the meanings of them, the intuition?”

    So when a person becomes like “self-actualized”, as you said – in a way, it’s them just taking responsibility for every part of their personality, including their lower functions that they’re not naturally going to want to feel very responsible for. So in a sense, if a person becomes very well developed, a very well-rounded individual – they could be an ESTP, but you might not be able to distinguish them anymore from an INFJ because they take responsibility for the intuition and the feeling, not just the thinking and the sensing.

    So I think that’s another way to look at it, to look at typology in a positive way is that: it’s not just about “This is my type, I’m stuck with it forever – I’m stuck with these bad things about it.” But you can actually do the work to take on your lower functions and become an all-round better person because of that. Because you’re becoming responsible for every area of life.

    [26:34] Tim Smal: Yeah and that’s why I think it’s a helpful framework, because ultimately I’m sure people out there in the world that are doing really good work – some of the folks that are really excelling and contributing to society – just have a good idea of who they really are, what their strengths are, how they can play to that. And they’ve put some effort into developing… you know, working those muscles.

    And so, speaking of which, some of the good work you’ve done, is you’ve launched a merchandise store and a “fun club”. Tell us about some of that stuff.

    [27:04] Frank James: Yeah, well, you know, it’s the typical YouTube thing. I actually… my artist – my friend Maria who designed my shirts and stuff that I have on sale – she just came to me out of nowhere, I had never met her before and she was like “Here’s some designs, you can sell them.” I was like “Oh, OK.” She was doing the smart thing that the entrepreneur-gurus tell you to do, is just reach out to someone and say “You’ll do something for free.” So that started the merchandise store, where I have several different shirts for sale.

    And I think, you know, it’s an interesting thing because you see some YouTube channels… I don’t want to ‘throw shade’ here, but you see a lot of YouTube channels where it just seems like “Why do you have merch?” Like, I don’t understand why someone would buy a t-shirt and it’s like very little effort put into it. But for me, I wanted to make sure that the… when I was selling shirts and mugs and stuff, it didn’t just feel like, you know “Here’s some crap you can buy”, but more like “Heres’ how you can feel like more a part of the group – more a part of the channel. You’re already a part of it ‘cos you’re watching, but if you want to have a physical piece of it… here you go.” And we’ve had that store going for several months now and we’ve got a lot of cool designs – some of them we just came out with.

    And then yeah, “The Fun Club”… I know you’re into music, so maybe this will interest you: I got the name “Fun Club” from… I got a old Wings album, I got “Red Rose Speedway” from 1973. And on the back of it, it’s like “Join the Wings Fun Club” ‘cos you know, back then they would actually have a letter – a physical letter sent out. And so I was like “Oh, that’s cool.” So I made “The FJ Fun Club” – which is really just an email list that I haven’t utilised very much. But if you sign up for it, you at least get an email on your birthday. So yeah… and you can find links to all that stuff on my YouTube channel.

    [29:09] Tim Smal: Yeah, well I was just going to ask “What’s the best way for folks to get hold of you?” But I guess they just pop onto YouTube, type in “Frank James” and they’ll find you right there. Speaking of my email that I will be receiving on my birthday… I’m looking forward to that. And I’m also looking forward to the eventual release of the ‘ENFP coffee mug’.

    [29:32] Frank James: Oh yeah. You know, the ENFPs… they’re always showing up in the comment section. So I think it would be fun to have a series of mugs or whatever with a bunch of different types. So I have got that now in the mind of possible future designs, just for Tim.

    [29:54] Tim Smal: Cool, well Frank it’s been really awesome speaking with you today. I must say before we wrap up that, I think you’re an excellent actor. I’m not quite sure how you are able to change between all these different personalities and clothes and different senses of humour. But I guess, if you check out the videos and all the different personalities put together, you get this really unique, creative, fun experience – so I really encourage the listeners to go and to have a watch.

    But in terms of the future and projects coming up in the not-so-distant future – what’s on the cards for Mr Frank James?

    [30:31] Frank James: Well Tim, first of all, thank you for your kind words – you’ve been a great host.

    What’s coming up next? You know, I don’t really look that far ahead. I’m kinda like gearing up to the point where I can plan out further ahead. But I think, in terms of the “16 personalities videos” we’ve got maybe a few more coming up that have to do with the whole current quarantine and everything – just trying to get a few laughs out of that.

    And I’m also gonna be… I started focusing on my channel more about the Enneagram, which is a whole different personality system. So I have done some teaching videos on that. And I think, I’m also going to start a series on MBTI that’s like, just the very basics – like 101 stuff for people who don’t know anything. So that should get started in the next month, yeah.

    So if you head over to YouTube and type in “Frank James” – my face will show up everywhere, that’s me. And if you don’t know anything about typology and you want to learn more, go ahead and subscribe and I’ll be getting some videos out for you soon.

    [31:41] Tim Smal: Awesome man. Well, thanks again. It was really great speaking with you today. And I’m gonna keep following your channel with all the new videos. And I look forward to my birthday email and my ENFP mug. But Frank keep up the good work – really, really awesome speaking with you. And I guess, I look forward to speaking with you again in the future and learning a bit more about the Enneagram .

    [32:03] Frank James: Yeah Tim, I’d love to come back on the show – just let me know and we’ll make it happen. It’s been great, thank you so much for having me.

  • Carol Williams – Podcasting and entrepreneurship

    April 16th, 2020
    Carol Williams
    Carol Williams
    Podcasting and entrepreneurship

    Carol Williams from The Stellar Effect, talks about podcasting and entrepreneurship.

    Carol co-founded South Africa’s first full-service podcast production agency The Stellar Effect in Cape Town with Jason Skippers in 2017. Both performers in their own right, Carol and Jason understand the power of sound and bring a wealth of experience to the table at the creative audio agency. Coupled with a passion for storytelling, The Stellar Effect captures sound as a way to transform both the teller and the listener.

    Visit Carol’s website

    Carol Williams interview on The Tim Smal Show
    Transcript – PDF

    Tim Smal (host): Hi everyone and welcome to the show. My name is Tim Smal and my guest today is creative entrepreneur Carol Williams. She recently opened The Stellar Effect, which is a creative audio agency in Cape Town, with her entrepreneurial partner Jason Skippers. And she has been involved with a lot of different projects over the years, ranging from music therapy, community development, small business development. And we have her on the line today in Cape Town. How you doing Carol?

    Carol Williams (guest): I’m doing good, thanks. Life in the time of Corona – but yes, I am well, thank you.

    [00:41] Tim Smal: Have you been keeping quite busy working from home over the last few weeks?

    [00:46] Carol Williams: Definitely. Yeah, I think for me, I’ve also tried to embrace the opportunity to rest a little bit and to not try and get super busy. Yeah, so it’s been a mixture of regular work and hardly any difference, in some ways, to normal life. And then some real changes and I think just taking time out to also think about the next little while and what that could look like for me, both in terms of personal life and business ventures as well.

    [01:24] Tim Smal: Great. Well, as a podcaster myself, I’m really excited to have you on the show today. I see you as an authority in South Africa on podcasting, so I’m certainly going to be asking you a lot of questions about the medium. But before we get there, perhaps you could tell the listeners about The Steller Effect, which is a creative audio agency, and what you guys get up to there.

    [01:48] Carol Williams: Sure. So we started in about 2017. Both myself and Jason are musicians and we write music as well. And we’d worked on a small film project together and we thought “OK, this has worked quite well. We’ve enjoyed working together – why don’t we start a music agency or a music production house?” So that was the start of Steller. And then over time we felt that music… firstly, that’s quite a busy space already, and we started exploring other forms of audio content and that kind of thing. And we came across podcasting – this was, yeah, as I say, in 2017 where, I think, obviously around the world it was already quite big, but it wasn’t really very well known in South Africa yet – well, in my circles anyway.

    And we started exploring this – I remember somewhere near the end of 2017, saying to Jason “Come, let’s just try this podcasting thing.” We recorded our first series just to try and learn and figure out how to do this thing. And that’s really when our – I guess, what our business is now, where it started developing from. We then, at the beginning of 2018, we started working with a business coach and we started developing our ideas, ‘cos we had a lot of different ideas. I remember back to those days and we literally had walls full of Post-it notes with all our ideas and we were sure that we could do all of them, all at once. And our business coach was very kind and allowed us to think that for a little while. And eventually we kind of narrowed it down to storytelling and audio storytelling. We had film as part of our offering for a while. We had storytelling workshops as part of our offering for a while.

    And then, I want to say, sort of, midway through last year we made the move to purely focus on audio. We found that we were spreading ourselves too thin with having film and a few other things on our offering. We stopped with the film and we stopped with some of the other things that we were doing and we decided to focus purely on audio, mostly in the form of podcasting. And then also developing audio brands sounds which is, I guess, what people would think of as jingles. I guess there’s this developing thing in the world at the moment, which is quite exciting, around the potential of branding in the audio space. So visual branding is something that we are very well acquainted with, but the use of music and sound and audio in that space is, kind of, untapped in a lot of ways. So that’s a space that we’ve ventured into as well.

    We have a collaborative business model, we call it ‘The Stellar Umbrella’, and we work with other small businesses, other creatives that have complimentary services. So for example, we work with scriptwriters, because part of our service offering is the script writing for podcasts. And there we work with writers. We work with graphic designers. There’s a whole lot of different people that we end up working with and we can pull them into projects, which is also great ‘cos it just broadens the expertise and the creativity available to us and that obviously benefits our clients as well.

    [05:05] Tim Smal: Great. So essentially The Steller Effect is South Africa’s first full service podcast production agency. So you guys are doing everything from the strategy development, the script research and writing, the design of the podcast logo, all the technical and creative production, the post-production, and of course, composing the audio brand sound. So this is very exciting because podcasting is a growing medium. The last estimate on your website stated that about 124 million people globally are listening to podcasts and that’s growing exponentially every year. So 2020 is gonna be a big year in the podcasting space. What do you think is so exciting about this medium that you connect with – why is it becoming so popular?

    [05:55] Carol Williams: So I think for me, I don’t really necessarily see it as a new medium. Well, it is new and it’s also not – I mean, storytelling is as old as humans. I think just the way we do it has changed. I remember as a little girl listening to storyteller tapes – I don’t know if you listened to those? And then I would also record my own stories on my little tape player and there’s something magical about listening to a story or hearing a story. If you think about radio, in the heyday of radio, and even the series that were on radio – the stories, the non-fiction stories that were told on radio. And the whole family would be huddled up around the radio and listening to that. And then obviously there was the invention of TV and it, kind of, moved to more visual things.

    But I think the reason why podcasting as a medium excites me so much is because there’s a lot of creative potential with audio, which I think a lot of people – they can see that when its visual and audio, but there’s something quite wonderful about allowing someone’s imagination… it’s, kind of, the same as reading: when you read something… I don’t know if you’ve ever had that experience then when you watch the movie and you either love it or hate it, ‘cos the character isn’t quite how you would have portrayed them or it’s not quite how you imagined them to be. And so there’s something with audio that still leaves something to the imagination of people.

    I think there’s also – if I look at the advent of social media, say over the last… about ten years – even when social media started, there was a bit more authenticity there. And I think there’s a generation of people now who are finding social media quite fake – OK, I’m generalising here, obviously. But there’s this desire for authentic stories and I think the medium of podcasting – it’s really hard to fake something that is thirty minutes long or forty minutes long or an hour-long. I think there’s a real place of authenticity and authentic voices and stories that come through in podcasts. So those are, I guess, on that level things that really excite me.

    In terms of South Africa, the thing that excites me a lot about podcasting, is the fact that it’s a lot cheaper data-wise than video. And so if you think about the potential of podcasting in the education space, in the development space – I think it’s infinite. You can just think about how many people can access… maybe access information that they wouldn’t necessarily have been able to access in the past and for a lot cheaper – for a lot cheaper than than YouTube or whatever. So I think in South Africa, particularly, there’s an accessibility thing which is quite exciting. And brands being able to access markets that they maybe haven’t been able to access in the past and really add value – I think that’s a big part of our hearts, anyway, is: We don’t ever wanna create content just for the sake of it. We want to make content that really matters and really makes a difference. And there’s such a powerful medium in audio in being able to do that.

    [09:05] Tim Smal: Yes, podcasting is certainly a very special medium. It creates a way for you to connect with the person behind the scene, behind the show. So not just the podcast host, but their guest and all the material that they have produced. So I have a really good example: Yesterday when I was doing my washing, I took my cell phone, I logged onto Spotify and I started listening to a couple of different podcasts. And I found myself listening to a podcast called ‘The Curious Cult’ which is by Nic Haralambous, a South African podcaster. And his guest on the show was Mmusi Maimane, the South African politician. And while I was hanging out my washing yesterday, I was listening to Mmusi’s voice in my ears. And I learnt so much about him and I really felt like he was there with me while I was hanging out my washing. And I just learnt so much and it was so great to I suppose connect with him in that way, that I just really enjoyed that experience. And I realised that the possibilities are infinite, in terms of connecting with various people around the world. So it’s not just in South Africa – you can listen to podcasts from all over the world. But have you had experiences like that, where in that moment, whether you washing dishes or washing clothes or whatever, you’ve had this experience of connecting with someone through a podcast?

    [10:29] Carol Williams: Definitely. I think there’s something so powerful in hearing people’s stories. Yeah, there are a few podcast that I really enjoy listening to which… it kinda allows me a space into the process that someone has been through. So, for example, there’s one that I really like called ‘The Second Life’ and it’s about women entrepreneurs or creatives who have had more than one career. I mean, there’s really big names on there like Cindy Crawford and that kind of thing. But I think that there’s a generosity in the storytelling, in that if you can listen to someone else’s journey of a start-up business or even a songwriter or someone who has been through the process to get where they’re at. And I think sometimes we often look at people and we’re like “Oh, they just got there” or like “that must have been so easy for them.” And we actually don’t understand the process of how hard it was or the lessons they learnt along the way. So I think the medium actually really, like you said, affords you that really valuable insight into someone’s journey in something. So that’s obviously in terms of interview-type podcasts and then there’s knowledge-based podcasts and there’s, I think, the ones that are just purely entertainment or comedy or whatever. So I think even within that there’s just so many opportunities to engage with stories in different ways.

    [12:00] Tim Smal: Yeah, I guess there is something for everyone. Whether you listen on Spotify or Google podcasts or Apple podcasts or Podchaser, you can create your own list of podcasts that you like and then keep up-to-date with whatever you want to. But speaking about people’s journeys, you yourself have been on quite an interesting journey over the last decade or so, in terms of your work and your life. I mentioned earlier on the show that you come from a music therapy background. You’ve done a lot of community development work and you moved into the small business development area. You’ve certainly become an entrepreneur in your own right. So would you like to tell us a bit about what that journey has been like for you?

    [12:43] Carol Williams: Sure. I definitely wouldn’t call it a normal… bunny ears that “normal”… journey. I don’t know about you or anyone listening to this, but I think the expectation I had, anyway, of life after school was: Go to university, you study and then you work – and then you… that seems to be where it runs out, in terms of what people know. And I think I found myself finishing university – I did a master’s in music therapy and then after three years of working in that I was like, “OK and now… I’m kind of bored.” And I guess people would say, “Oh, you know, like millennials or whatever…” But for me it was more about a thing of like, I knew that I had more potential, I had more capacity and I didn’t quite feel like I was going to meet that – especially ‘cos I was working in the NGO sector. And I think for me, also just seeing how necessary it was to create environments where social change… I think, a big vehicle of social change is actually in creating businesses and creating employment and also opportunities for people to get dignity through work. And not necessarily just in a feeding scheme or whatever – although obviously all of those things are super important… super, super important. But for me, I just felt like it wasn’t quite where I wanted to be.

    Yeah, I then went and worked at an entrepreneurial development academy. I was there up until the end of last year. I was there full-time for two-and-a-half years and then I went part-time to, kind of, figure out what I wanted to build. So that was amazing. I think anyone starting an entrepreneurial journey, having some form of regular income is super important because you don’t want to put the pressure on your business too early to pay you like a full salary or whatever. I think a lot of people actually… their ideas don’t work out because they put the financial pressure on their start-up or on their venture too soon. So for me, that was quite a key. And I was developing other skills at the same time. I had always performed as a musician and started writing music as well and continue to do that. And then started Stellar.

    So I’ve worked in Pollsmoor prison as a music therapist. I’ve worked in theatre. I really have had a lot of different experiences. I mean it’s been a different journey, I think, to a lot of my friends and even my siblings. I think my poor parents have been… I think they went through a patch of being really worried and now they, sort of, starting to get it. But for me, I just was like “You know, I can’t just be satisfied with doing this one thing – I know that there’s more and I want to explore all of those things.” And I think, for me, it’s become more and more refined over time. Like where I’m at now, I would say is … yeah, it’s a lot more refined than where I was a few years ago. But it’s been really exciting… and scary a lot of the time, you know, walking away from a full-time job and the security of a salary and all that stuff is never easy. And I would say, “Only do that if you really sure you want to, because the demands of that journey are huge.” But I think if you’re someone who is creative and you have a lot of different ideas, I think it’s really important to allow yourself to to explore those things. And something like for us getting a business coach – that was wisdom. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know and thinking that you’re gonna be able to figure everything out on your own, I think, is not necessarily the wisest thing. And so obviously there are people along the way that will help you do what you want to do.

    Again, this is a personal preference. I know for me, I just can’t do one thing – I know that it’s always gonna probably look like a few different things at the same time. I think a big part of that was letting go of this idea of “OK, now finally I’m just gonna do one thing.” Whereas actually maybe I’ll never just do one thing and that’s actually OK. And even if I do just end up doing one thing, that’s also fine. It’s letting go of certainty and this, sort of, weird control that we try and exert over knowing everything about how our lives are gonna turn out. I don’t think anyone knows that really. And obviously you can exercise wisdom in how you go about making those decisions. But for me, it’s been really cool to explore and discover all of these things – as a person, obviously that’s been an internal journey, but then obviously the expression of that, in terms of business and creative projects and all of that, has also been really cool.

    [17:35] Tim Smal: Yeah, it certainly is a journey of exploration. The way I see it, is that it comes down to trial and error. Because when you’re younger, you think to yourself “Well, I like doing this or I like doing that – I’d like to be, so and so when I’m older.” But in reality, until you try those different jobs and you experience what it’s like to be in those job roles, you don’t really know. And so when you leave school, as the years go on from college into your first job and so forth – you’re really experimenting with what makes you come alive, where you feel competent, etc. And one of the most useful tools for me when I was working for a company was the Clifton Strengthsfinder, where I was able to identify my top five strengths. And that really helped me to identify the areas where my core gifts were. In other words, where I was able to contribute to the team doing work that was of an exceptional quality. And I think that’s the journey that everybody is on, because everybody is different and they’ve all got these different strengths. But they really want to feel like what they doing matters and it matters to other people. And when you doing something well and you enjoy it and other people notice that, you get this real sense of satisfaction. Would you agree with that?

    [18:58] Carol Williams: Hundred percent. I love the Clifton Strengthsfinder actually. I remember doing it and almost bursting into tears ‘cos suddenly I was like “Oh, this makes so much sense.” My top strength is ‘ideation’ and for me, you just basically think of ideas all the time. And I knew that about myself, but I didn’t realise that it was a strength. I didn’t realise there was something that I could utilise and it was probably why I got so bored, so quickly once the ideation part of something was done. Yeah, and I I think even within building a business, both my business partner and I have done the Strengthsfinder recently and then looking at how we can structure the business around those things, instead of trying to build something that actually doesn’t suit us, in terms of our strengths and that kind of thing.

    So, I so agree and I think I often fear keeps people back from really engaging with the life that they want to have. And I think for me, that’s also been such a powerful thing to recognise is: I’m not a victim – no one is a victim. Yes, you’ve been through hard stuff or sometimes you don’t necessarily get to choose your situation, but you always get to choose your response. And so for me to sit in work that I wasn’t necessarily loving, I realised that I actually had a “victim mentality” there, ‘cos I was, sort of, allowing myself to be a victim to the situation, instead of being like “OK, well what kind of life do I want to live and what kind of work do I wanna do?” It takes a lot of humility, I think, to do that ‘cos for me I was… Flip, when I made that decision, I was working a full-time job and then working at a coffee shop on the weekend and you know, it’s so easy to be like “Oh, well I have a master’s degree – why am I serving people coffee?” But actually for me, I was like “If that’s part of how I get to where I wanna be, that’s fine.” And eating ‘humble pie’ every once in a while is not a bad thing, because, I think, if you know why you doing something, then it doesn’t necessarily make waking up on a Saturday morning, super early to go to this job you don’t particularly want to do, when all your friends are eating breakfast because they actually have “real jobs” – again, I use that term loosely.

    But for me, I realised I needed to have a long-term view of what I was building. I can’t just have a short-term view because otherwise I’m always going to feel like I’m failing, you know. Whereas actually, if I have a view of like twenty years or thirty years or forty years of my life and recognising that what I’m building now will probably, hopefully set me up for better things later on as well, and not kinda just building for the immediate future.

    [21:41] Tim Smal: Yeah and I guess what it comes down to for everyone, is that they need to develop a certain amount of self-awareness. So in other words, they need to have a good understanding of who they really are – not what other people want them to be or what their parents think that they should do, because when they really have a good understanding of their personality type, their core gifts, then they’re able to make decisions that are in line with where they want to be in the future. And it’s going to make them happy. Because ultimately everybody has to work – whether you have one day job, a side hustle, a passion project – whatever you call it… everyone has to generate income and everyone has to work. But if you are engaged with your work, if you enjoying what you doing – you are going to feel more fulfilled. Your happiness levels are going to rise and that’s going to impact your whole life, because people spend so much time at work, that their happiness is linked to the way that they feel about their work.

    [22:47] Carol Williams: Hundred percent. And I don’t get the point of being unhappy for like, forty years and then what… and then you saved and then you – it seems like people in retirement are also kind of unhappy, from what I can tell. [laughs] It doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me. And I think for our generation, especially, I think retirement is not really, necessarily even going to be something we get to experience. And I think that’s kind of cool – I kinda want to be like, 95 years old and still doing gigs, you know what I’m saying? [laughs] But maybe I’ll feel differently when when I’m that age.

    But I think, for me, it’s not necessarily just about happiness, but it’s about purpose. And I think, generally people want to feel like they have a purpose. And if you feel like you’re in your purpose, you going to probably be happy. But I think, it’s about knowing what you’d like to build and then it doesn’t matter if it’s hard to get there – you actually know the direction that you’re headed in and so you can, kind of, take the hard stuff with the… ‘cos it’s not going to be… not everything is going to be easier, you’re not going to necessarily feel happy everyday. But I think, overall there’s the deep sense of like – I describe it more as like, peace than happiness. So even on really tough days or days where I’m like “What the heck am I doing? Why am I doing this?” I still have a peace that I know means that I’m in the right place. I don’t know if they make sense? But yeah, I think people in general are wanting to live in a purposeful way and feel like their life has meaning. I don’t think you can have both – I don’t think you can live in a way that is just to please other people and have that. I’m not sure that that’s possible.

    [24:37] Tim Smal: So in line with all these ideas that we’re speaking about today, do you have any advice or tips for the listeners out there that might be grappling with some of these issues?

    [24:49] Carol Williams: I think it’s about letting go of your own perception of what life should look like and having more of a curious outlook. So being like, “I wonder what it would be if it was this? Or I wonder if I did that, what would happen?” For me again, taking the time to find out what really makes you come alive is super important, because it does – it takes time, it takes effort… it’s a lot easier to just numb yourself. It’s a lot easier to live vicariously through other people. It’s a lot easier to compare yourself or to get trapped in comparison and kinda allow that ‘victim mentality’ to settle. So I think, just being like “Cool, do I wanna choose the hard route or am I happy with just sticking in this space – where I’m maybe not thriving but, you know, I get to pay my bills every month and that’s actually enough for me.” I think it’s just recognising – what do you want? And then making choices according to that.

    Yeah and I think the other really important thing is to not try and do stuff on your own. Like I said a bit earlier – you don’t know what you don’t know. So especially if you’re wanting to start a business, for example – get people who know more than you do to help you, to come alongside you. Ask lots of questions, ask people. And I think to just try stuff. And I know that this maybe a bit cheesy, but if you can get into your head that “something isn’t a failure – like you’ve just worked out how not to do something.” And instead of linking your self-worth to whether something works or not, which is difficult – I do get that. But then it stops being so scary. Or maybe it doesn’t stop being scary, but you’ll do it anyway – like you do it, in spite of that thing.

    [26:41] Tim Smal: Wow, there’s certainly a lot of takeaways there. I particularly enjoyed the comment on collaboration. I always think about working with others and working together on teams and you know, sharing knowledge, sharing experience – coming together to create something wonderful that’s bigger than just the individual. So I’m very excited about collaboration and speaking of which – if any of the listeners would like to get hold of you Carol, your website is thestellareffect.com

    [27:14] Carol Williams: That is correct, yes. Or they can email at hello@thestellareffect.com – that will also get to me.

    [27:21] Tim Smal: Wonderful. Well, it’s been really great speaking with you today Carol. My mind has been going crazy with all these cool ideas that you’ve been talking about. It’s gonna be really fun listening back to the show and reflecting on all the ‘pearls of wisdom’ that you’ve dropped today on this podcast, so thank you so much.

    [27:39] Carol Williams: Cool. Thanks so much for the opportunity, it’s such a pleasure.

    [27:43] Tim Smal: Awesome. Take care and all the best for 2020.

    [27:47] Carol Williams: Thanks Tim, you too. All the best.