Finding Your Path

Imagine standing at a crossroads after selling your successful T shirt business, unsure of your next move. This was Mike Dooley's reality. Faced with three crappy options, Mike chose to take small actions in each direction. Through this exploration, his true talents and passions emerged. By embracing the unknown and following the clues revealed by his actions, Mike built a thriving career that has inspired millions worldwide. His journey shows how even crappy choices can lead to discovering your talents and true path. Let's explore how you can uncover your own potential and navigate your next career move, even when the options seem less than ideal. I'm Curtis. My wildly successful pal over there is Joe, and we are dudes in progress. Hey, Joe.

Dude, that cracked me up. Usually I notice the notes and the introductions that. Those funny introductions that we give each other. That one caught me by surprise. I don't know how I didn't notice that, but that's hilarious. Well, I've been. I've been accused of being wild, and we are definitely pals. The successful is up in the area, right? That's up to interpretation, but thank you for the compliment, dude. Man, it is good to talk to you, Kirk.

Why? Why is that?

I just like talking to you, man. It's a. It's positive energy. It's. It's friends sharing their lives together. And I just always get a lot out of our conversations, whether we're doing this on a Saturday morning or whether we're doing it on our weekly show here, Dudes in progress. I just get a lot out of this relationship and our interactions, man. And this. That little comment somehow struck me funny and made my moment for now. So thanks.

You were breaking up there on camera, and I wasn't really afraid to lose it too.

It just got me by surprise.

Brother, I'm glad I'm here to. I'm here for your entertainment. And anyone listening, maybe, I don't know if they're joining in the same fun, but I appreciate you so much too. And I was thinking of you on this. I had a little mini crisis going on with one of my adult kids. Have you ever had or question your career moves or what you're doing currently in your job?

Me personally? Absolutely. I have. Absolutely I have. I mean, think about this, Kurt. I can go all the way back to my early 20s, even 18 years old. My very first entrepreneurial venture when I was an adult was I started a cleaning business with a friend, and we had a couple accounts and we had a couple of things that. A couple businesses that we cleaned for and that. That worked for a short While then I went into the insurance business, of all things. I owned an insurance agency and then from an insurance agency, I went and decided to start a publishing company where I printed and distributed via mail coupon magazines that mailed over on the east side of Cincinnati. And I did that for a while and I'll be dad gone if I didn't decide I wanted to buy a bar. So I was a bar owner for a little bit of time and gosh, I've done a lot, man, I've done a lot and I've grown a lot. I've made a lot of mistakes. Lost some money, dude, more money than I'm. More money than I even want to talk about losing by trying different things. I. But yeah, I owned a bar for a while and then like I said, I was in the, I was in the publishing business where I published coupon magazines. What else did I. The insurance agency. I did a couple other things, a couple other side gigs here and there. And I think the most fulfilling thing that I do right now, outside of my regular job is of course I do some coaching on the side. And I'm working with one client right now who just kicked off an awesome podcast. The name of his podcast is Spectrum and Camouflage. And check it out. Just go just look up on, on Apple Podcasts or on Pocket Cast or however you're listening to podcast for Spectrum and Camouflage. He has a really interesting show because he has melded his passion for hunting with the care of his autistic child and the family dynamics of that and how they are, how they are victorious in raising an autistic child and the highs and the lows. And he melds that very well with his passion for hunting. And it's just a really interesting show. And I'm really proud of Tommy Spectrum and Camouflage is the name of his show. And I'm glad, so glad you brought this up because right now that's, I think that's the thing that I'm most passionate about is coaching people and helping people focus on certain life skills related to business, related to sales, related to even podcasting, some multimedia type of stuff. I'm really latching onto this curtain. I'm loving it right now.

Well, I appreciate all of your perspective you're going to, you're already shared and what you're going to share as we look through some of these tips that I'm researched on. Just how do you figure out what you want to do with your life? What's that lucrative, interesting work that was, has always been a goal I can remember Joe back to high school. I was very focused on figuring out I was definitely motivated to go to college. But what was going to be my life's work and was always it's always been a value. We talked about values, a value of mine to work in some area that I was interested in, that I enjoyed going to work, but that I made a good living, that I could support my family. That was always as far back. And we both have experiences that we can share with others. And like I said, I had a family member, a child, adult child who's going through this struggle. And heck, you and I have gone through this even at our age over the last few years where we've made a couple of changes. So it's never really over. When you're not happy with something you're doing, you want to make a change. So I got some tips for that. But I've shared this story with you from the intro. Mike Dooley is an author that I first learned about from the movie the Secret. And I know we've talked about this law of attraction till we're exhausted that that thought. But like I said, I always try to take a little bit of the positive from anything I'm reading or I'm interested in or I'm researching. And this little story from Mike Dooley has always resonated with me when he talks about this transition. He was at the and I've watched webinars with him too. I took a free course that he did one early January, beginning of the year. But how do you find that one thing that you want to work on and improve? He always relates the story of this T shirt business him and his mom and his brother had. They did really well. For whatever reason, they decided to sell it. He had been in as an accountant for many years and I don't think he really ever enjoyed that corporate career. He really went into an entrepreneurial way and he really liked that. But when this T shirt business ended, he had no idea. He was like, like I said, at a crossroads. What is the thing I'm going to do? He had absolutely. He was struggling with it for months and he finally said, all right, I could go back to being an accountant. I could try to get my old job back, work with a different firm. That's one of my ideas I could keep doing. In the T shirt business. He was the one the creative thoughts and they had like really inspiring T shirts with phrases, that kind of thing. But he had a background in some of this new age thought patterns. So he Started writing these notes to the universe and an email list that he had from the T shirt business and just started writing like that. I think it's a daily thing that he did. And then he was also interested in public speaking and going down that area. But he felt all three of those were crappy options. He didn't really know. He didn't see anything, really. You have this feeling like, I don't know what I want to do. I'm not sure what I want to do. But he had those three options. Funny enough, that little notes to the universe started to catch hold, and he did try to get another job. It was interesting. He started to go looking for a job and nobody wanted to hire him. It seems like he was overqualified, just like nothing was working as he was trying to look for an accounting job. And he just felt that this nudge in the other two directions started to work. He started going, looking at. He said Toastmasters and started doing some public speaking. And he was scared to death. And it didn't really work at first, but he's. So it was just these little actions here and there and that in those two spaces where he started to make some gains. Until one day he became a author who's selling millions of books worldwide.

Yeah, that's. I. I love his story. And we're not too far off. I. I do want to say this. We're not too far off from each other on the Law of Attraction. I know we've talked a lot about that subject, but I love his story because he moved forward. What is it that you said about him? He had three options.

Three crappy options.

The least, suckiest.

Yeah.

Yeah. The one that sucked.

At least he started with the one that he thought sucked the least.

And that's a good place to start. Right? Just choose something and move forward.

Yeah.

And figure out where it goes from there. I think so much time is wasted and boy, Kirk, this is me preaching to myself, to be quite honest with you. So much time is wasted and trying to find our passion, trying to find our calling in life or whatever it might be before we take any action. I don't think we find those things. I don't think we find those that Calling for our life. Until we start trying life.

Right.

Until we start trying different things and following different paths and allowing ourselves to get caught in the flow of things just to see what happens. And if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. That's okay. So many times we get locked up and frozen up. I think and again, this is me preaching to myself, dude, trying to figure out what I want to do with my life instead of just doing go out there and pick the least suckiest thing and move forward. And you're going to find. You're going to. I think you're going to surprise yourself where you excel and where you enjoy the activities that you enjoy and the things that you lose time in. I think you would. I think you'll surprise yourself. And at very minimum, boy, you're going to get a lot of life experience. Your faith is important to you. Curtin mind's important to me. And I posted this thing on Facebook several years ago, and as you were talking, it just. The memory of it just popped into my head. I wonder how many times I missed the opportunity to do God's work when I was looking for my calling.

Oh, that's deep.

I wonder how many times I missed the opportunity to do God's work because I was too busy looking for my calling.

Yeah, I can remember being in church and a sermon going down this space. And it's along the lines of it's easy for someone who's a minister or a priest to say they found their calling in the religious space. But I remember this particular pastor talking about, you don't have to be a minister to minister to people. And this is usually that topic of talents. You. You don't realize how many talents you have. If you're helping a friend or in your work, you can look at your work as your calling or your ministry, the work that you do. And that was always really refreshing for me to hear. Like you said, it can be really. You might be looking right past it. You don't see the forest through the trees. Is that the saying?

Sometimes, yeah.

Takes a little practice. Well, let me go through these nine that I kind of tips. If we were talking to ourselves when we. If we're ever in this position again or we're talking. We both have adult children or maybe friends that you might. If you think back on our experiences, we can share them in these. But the number one I had Reflect on past successes. No matter what age you are, you've had some success. You've been in school. There's something you can. You don't always think about your talents, and you might have to do some reflection on it. So just analyze projects that you've done in the past, things that you did where you just lost time, things just time went flying by. On the opposite part of that, there's things you did in the past that just Bored you to tears. You can sort those things out. Look for the patterns of reoccurring themes from successes that you had. Are you praised for? Leadership, creativity, problem solving. Those are skills that I think a lot of people underestimate that they might really be able to push forward. Write down moments when you felt proud of your achievements. This can reinforce your strengths and build confidence. So don't forget the things you've done in the past that might be something in the future that you could build on.

And these are tough exercises. I'm looking at your list here, Kurt, and these are tough exercises. This one about reflecting on your past successes. Sometimes if you're overly critical, you can't think of any. Right, right, exactly. You can't think of any past successes. You can't think of any themes that you've been successful in or times that you really feel like you've excelled. Especially if you're. If you have a high level of self criticism, as some of us do. But start somewhere. You can find some small little thing. I would say you can even make it silly, right? You can say, I'm going to set a goal right now of getting up and walking to my car. Now I'm just making this stuff up, but I'm going to set a goal right now and get up and walk to my car. You get up, you walk to your car. You acknowledge that you got up and you walk to your car. There's one thing that you've done successfully. There you go. You can start with that one small thing. And I know it sounds silly and it might sound, but it's all about tiny steps and momentum. If and I have this problem, I've done exercises similar to this. And you said, okay, I'm going to reflect on my past successes. Crickets, nothing. So start. If you can't start. If you can't name your. The big great success that you've had in life and you can identify those patterns, start with some small, tiny success. And if you absolutely can't think of a single successful moment in your past, create one right now.

Yeah, again, I'm gonna. You probably heard one of my stories of my early career thoughts. Like I said I would go to the library when I was in high school and try to. Whatever books I could. What was that one? The parachute book. What colors? Your parachute was a book.

What color is your parachute?

Yeah, that was one I can remember that's been around for a long time now. Back when I was in high school, there weren't a lot of computer technology available. Didn't have classes in high school. I went to college as a computer major and boy, it did not thrill me. My first couple of computer courses, freshman and sophomore, really tedious, hard, no graphics. It was a boring thing and it took a long time to accomplish very little, which maybe at my age that I was young and just didn't feel like that was going to be a thing. But I always felt like I was analytical. But I think just the next point too is trying to identify your passions. At some point when I started working, I would take on little analytical jobs in my customer service position, analyzing data. And that was a point when this activity of doing hours would go by and I was deep into it and lost track of time. That was a place where I started to notice. I think I do have a passion for this. And this is when the PC was starting to come out and technology was changing in a positive way that made it reachable for me. I guess it was more available to me. And then I started catching a passion. But I noticed that was one thing that started too, definitely. And I think I was doing some reflection that in my customer service work or somewhere along the line, I would share my learning with other people and enjoyed helping people. I knew that helping people in this technology thing was starting to grow and I was starting to recognize it, but it didn't. It took a long time. It wasn't. It didn't happen overnight.

But you certainly have a helpful spirit about you, Kurt. And I can certainly understand how you latched onto technology and that moved as you started working with people to helping people. And believe it or not, you're fairly patient when you're working with people. I've seen you work. I've seen you work with people on technology and walking them through a process. I can certainly see that some people have problems identifying their passions. And again, this is going to be a theme of mine throughout this conversation. Don't wait to take action to identify your passion. You will identify your passion as you take action. Recognize those activities, like you said, those activities that you lose track of time in that bring you some joy, that you really find a groove. And I like your thought about thinking back to childhood and reflecting on what you did as a kid. What kind of things did you do? Where did you find yourself as you. As you lost track of time, even as a kid, what interests did you have? If you can remember back and you don't have to think about that thing as your passion. But I love what your mindset here of finding common threads, of finding Common kind of common denominators in each one of these activities. But again, this is going to be a common theme. You're going to hear me say this a lot during this conversation. Do not wait until you find your passion or your calling before you take action.

Absolutely. That's going to come up in a couple different ways. It's a key. I think it's key, especially if you're feeling pretty down about things. I always felt if I was taking some action, thoughtful action in the right direction, it just made me feel better. I could get through the crappy situation I was in if I was taking action to try to get better. And these are some of the things you can do. I think all these nine that I'm talking about, there's action you can take as far as identify your passions. Don't say no to things, just let your daydreams run wild. It's to think crazy thoughts and, and then you never know what could open up a door for you. Number three, seek feedback. Ask close friends, family, colleagues. Ask them what they think your strengths are. I know that's a tough one. I think one thing I really like about seeking feedback is talking to people that you might have an interest in what profession they're doing. Boy. Making a contact with somebody and understanding what they do. And in, in the thought that it might be interesting. You. This was a big thing I did years and years ago. There was a manager who was, had a PC on his desk and he had an analytical job and he was retiring. And I asked him, geez, Bill, what are you gonna do when you retire? Because I, I think I could be good at what you're doing there. I'd like to know more. Can you show me? And he was. People will just, you ask them about their career or their job and what they do. Most people are going to be very helpful and share everything with you. So that's a key one for sure. That's been part of my success.

Yeah. When, when you seek feedback from people and ask them to help you along, you're showing a vulnerability that may be uncomfortable, but own that discomfort because you'll grow from it.

Great point.

And it's going to feel just weird.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Now, unless you're the type of person that just. I'm the type of person that I, I, I feel kind of odd when I'm seeking out input from close family and friends, people usually people who I seek some level of respect from or some level of closeness. Right. Those are the people that I'm, I'M more afraid than, than anybody to ask their input. But own that discomfort and ask people what are my strengths? Where do you see, where do you see me excelling? Ask. I like what you said here about using professional tools or people that are in a profession that you might be interested in to help you understand what they do. Because you can glean a lot from a 15 minute conversation from somebody that's willing to share and you may find out, wow, that is not for me.

Yeah, they'll share. Have them share the good with the bad. Absolutely. This one. Take personality and skill assessments. I've done these. I know you have to. I mentioned Myers Briggs. I probably did very famous one Strengths Finders. I went and looked. I actually found my strength finder report from years ago. I was surprised with your top five still online and I, I think that did help me. I don't know if this one achiever seems to be one of the strengths that stood out to me, but that can be helpful. Career counseling. I used to go to career counselors in high school and college all the time. Like I said, I was obsessed with this particular thing trying to find out what was going to be something I would enjoy doing. But yeah, those can be helpful. Again, you're taking action, you're trying to get an insight to and some of these things will actually even tell you because of your personality. These are some of the careers that probably would fit well for you.

Yeah, I like these things a lot. These personality tests and these skill assessments. Myers Briggs and strength finders. I've done them both. I can't remember my top five but one of them, in fact I was just looking at it very briefly today. One of my top strengths is something called belief. That's where you have a firm foundation in what you think is right and wrong. And it's really an interesting, interesting thing. What I like about these most is it helps you defeat the blank page. If you don't know what else to do. If you don't know anything about what your calling might be or where your strengths might be or where your passions lie and you're just not getting traction anywhere. Go grab one of these, one of these books. Strength Finders is a great book. It'll give you a little code in the book that you can take the online test and then the book itself will help you with your the strengths that are revealed through the test and it'll help you, like I said, defeat that blank page. It'll give you some momentum in a direction now where that direction ultimately takes you, that's a lifelong journey, dude. But it can help you with a direction. Like you said, it'll even give suggestions on what you might want to try out or what direction you might want to go. I really like these personality and skill assessments, Kurt. And the reason is the same reason I like ChatGPT and AI because it helps you defeat the blank page. If you have. If you're lost for a direction, this will give you something.

Love it. This is one of my favorites. Number five, experiment and try new things. Joe, you shared with a bunch of. Maybe you have some more. I'll give you some of the things I tried when I was. When I first got out of college, I had a degree in marketing. I went for several interviews, tests for a sales job. Because if you have a marketing degree, the only thing really available are sales jobs. And I, I have a good personality. That was my thought. Like I get along with people, but I did not get that job that I interviewed for so long. Quite interesting. I don't know if the guy was copping out. He did say I probably wasn't right for sales. But he also said they were really looking for women because they had to meet a quota. Just to give you an idea, 35 years ago.

That's funny.

That's a whole nother topic of itself. But that was a good thing. That was not a good thing for me. But I even tried sales a couple other times. I did part time evenings. It was when they were doing delivery food at home. I think it was a freezer, frozen foods at home. And I went on some sales calls with a guy. I remember going to a couple houses. It didn't take long. I would say two houses before I said, this sucks. I'm not doing this because dealing with the public in sales and especially at that level was not my thing at all. I was learning all the things that I didn't want to do.

Yeah, that's what the process. That's what the process is about, isn't it? When you experiment and get out there and try. I like your idea of volunteering because it's a low risk situation.

Right.

Just go out there and volunteer to be something. Right?

Yeah. If you want to get into management, you can manage some stuff and volunteer. They're always looking for people to manage things.

Absolutely, absolutely. And if you want to try your hand at sales in a volunteer basis and not have your life depend on it, there's lots of fundraising opportunities that you can try your sales skills at. If you want to give sales a call, there's all kinds of opportunities, all kinds of career paths in the volunteer world where you can go in and you can say hey listen, I want to try, I want to try this. And it's very low risk because you're not. Something happens when you're not dependent. When you're not dependent on an income for an activity and you feel like you can just leave at any time. Right. I'm a volunteer. I can just walk out when I want. I'm not stuck here. But you learn either what you what you're suited for or like you said, what you're not suited for. I love the idea of volunteering to experiment and try new things and you're.

Going to meet people which let me tell you something.

Yep.

If you want to get a job, it's who you know, not what you know so much in my experience.

Yep. I would agree.

Yeah. There's so many ways to experiment and try new things. Take a course. We're big fans of doing courses, hobbies, classes that interest you. You find hidden talents, side gigs, freelance on side projects. My uncle was a lineman for the county. He was climbing poles ever since I knew and we did cut trees in the evenings with my dad. But I can remember him coming over to the house selling Cutco knives part time to make extra money really ended up being the leading sale one of the leading salesmen in the entire country in Cutco Knives. Cutler Knives was cutting they were called and which led to him leaving the power company and then starting his own business which was mostly sales related and doing quite well. So he went from.

That's awesome. You would have never thought. Right. He started this little side gig and a lot of people were probably telling him Cutco knives because you gotta, you have to make a pretty significant investment. The way I understand it in things like that like Cutco's knives you have to buy your first set of knives and. And so you have to make a bit of an investment. And I'm sure he got rejection after rejection, maybe a little bit of ridicule for what he was doing. So that tells me something, a little something about your uncle, about his. Stick to it.

My mom said yeah, my uncle, he could sell an Eskimo a freezer. And I think that best describes. But yeah, try something new at work. I think the best thing to do if you're in a good company, look, look for an opportunity inside where you are at work. Look for a different responsibility maybe you could take on and volunteer for. So lots of action you can take. And it again Makes me, always, has always made me feel better when I'm trying something. Number six, pay attention to what comes naturally. I know you like journaling, Joe. I probably could do more of that when I'm doing that. I think it's good. Observe reactions. Notice when others seek your help or praise you. This often points to a natural. A natural strength. Reflect on ease. Consider activities that feel effortless compared to your peers. These are likely areas of natural talent. I think these are things we overlook.

That's a real good point. Reflect on ease. Because so many times we don't understand that the things that we do that bring us joy, that we find easy. Many, many people do not find that activity or that work or that action easy at all. And that's why so many times craftsmen and artists have difficulty charging for their work because it. They just love it so much and it comes so easy to them. It doesn't feel like work. They're like, I'm going to get paid to do this. Well, yeah. Why? Because you are providing value to somebody that doesn't. That cannot duplicate what you do. And that's art. That's. That's crafts, craftsmanship. And it's amazing how many, how many artists fail. How many crafts people fail out of the resistance to charge for what they do. I'll be quite honest with you. I have this myself sometimes on coaching inside stuff that I do because it's like, yeah, that was pretty easy to do. I'm. Don't worry about it. I'm not going to charge any, but we got to charge. But this reflecting on what's easy is really something to take hold of. Find out what you do that's easy for you to do and just see where that road takes you.

Yeah. Don't underestimate your skill. I was thinking when you were talking about that, I was thinking about accounting. I hate accounting. I don't know why. What is it about me? I could probably do it. I do not want to do it. I resist that. I'll pay someone any day of the week to do my accounting, bookkeeping, that kind of stuff. I'm glad my wife pays the bills because, yeah, I have nothing I want to do with it. Set goals and challenges. I think challenges are really important, Joe. And I think about you talking about getting out of your comfort zone and talking to somebody that you might be a little intimidated by. I can tell you a couple of conversations I had with people in this area of wanting to move forward. They were. I had to really get my courage up to go, especially When I was younger. Today, not as much. When you exercise this a little more, it gets easier too. But I can remember walking up to that really tough manager who I didn't really know very well, who was a manager, to the manager, to the manager above me and say, hey, Bill's leaving in a couple of weeks and I think I'd be really good at that job. And what do you think? I start working with Bill or. I don't remember how. I probably was so nervous. I don't remember what I said. And he just looked at me, said, yeah, if you, you want to start working here half day and work at your old job half day, we'll start making the transition. It was like that quick, which led to my IT career. It was the, it was a little spark that started my IT career.

I like this, I like this thought of regularly challenging yourself and set up challenges, set goals. And I have some thoughts about goals and we don't have to go into that right now. But, but, but challenges in your life to set up challenges and even gamify your pursuit a little bit. This, your pursuit for your passion. Put together some kind of scoreboard that says I'm going to, I'm going to give myself 10 points for each new thing I try right this week, each new thing that I try. And if at the end of the week I have a 100 points, which means I've tried 10 things, I'm going to treat myself to an ice cream or I'm. We're going to, I'm going to go out to a nice dinner.

It's a numbers game, isn't it?

Yeah. And I like gamifying life. I really do. I like setting up little challenges and little things. It's so funny. Can I give you an example of what I did just this week at work? Gamify something just silly. Can I do.

You're making this all up. You really do this?

No, I do this. Absolutely not.

Surprised.

So there's a candy bar that's been sitting on a, on a desk. We have like a snack desk at work and there's a candy bar sitting on the snack desk and it's a sugar free dark chocolate Hershey's bar. All right. A sugar free dark chocolate Hershey's bar. And it's been sitting there for a couple days and colleague and I were talking and I said, I tell you what, let's do an over under here. Let's pick a date. And this was yesterday, in fact, that we did this. Let's pick a date. What's one week from today? One week from Today is the 21st. Right. This was yesterday. So one week from today is the 21st. And I said, you pick. What's the over and under on this from the 21st? Is somebody going to take that candy bar before the 21st or after the 21st? You pick. And so he picked after the 21st. So he means. It means he picked the over. Right. So I said, okay, I'll take the under. So here's $1. We're going to bet each other $1. And whoever takes that candy bar, if I. If somebody takes it before the 21st, I get the money. And if somebody takes it after the 21st, you get the dollar. Right. If somebody takes it on the 21st, it's even money. Okay. And so. And so we were laughing about it, and he said, you know what, Joe? Now I have a reason to come to work just to see if somebody has taken that candy bar you made work.

Work. Interesting. Finally, it's.

But it's little things like that.

I take the over. Who wants a Hershey bar that's dark chocolate and no and no sugar?

I gave him the choice. I gave him the choice, but, oh, it's still there. We're only in the day one. So if somebody takes it before the.

21St, I have to update us next week.

I certainly will. I'll give you a full report when all said and done. But that's what I'm talking about. Gamifying the game of gamify your life and you can gamify this process of finding your passion.

Yeah, for sure.

Just by trying new things.

Yeah. Don't get frustrated. Try not to get frustrated. I know, I know we do. But it is a game. Learn from role models. Try to find some role models. Find people whose careers you might be interested. Admire what they do. We talked a little bit about asking them about their path. Research how they achieve success, what skills they utilize. Seek mentors who can guide you and inspire you in your journey. Yeah, I think that's always been something I tried to do, and talking to them will enlighten you for sure.

And if you can't find a mentor, Kurt, pick up a book. Read a book. Find somebody that's written a book on something that you think you might be interested in. And here's something that you could do. Don't read the book. Just decide that you're going to go through the lot to the library or to a bookstore or something like that, and you're going to leaf through 10 different books. And you're just going to open up the book and maybe leaf through it, see if there's something in there that sparks an interest in you and then read a little bit about that book. And if it's worth buying, then you buy that book. But make a commitment. If you're trying to find, if you don't have a role model, if you don't have somebody that in your life right now that you can find, just go to the library, pick 10 books on subjects you think you might be interested in and leaf through those books and see what happens. I'll bet something magic. I'll bet something magical happens.

We're dating ourselves with books, but yeah, I spent a lot of time at libraries about books, but now you got YouTube. You can. Yeah, YouTube will start sending you. You get an interest in something and you'll get tons of content to sit there and watch casually too.

But there's something magical about reading a book. Now I read most of my books, almost all of my books on a Kindle, but there's still something magical about reading words that at a certain pace that kind of take it in and you know what? Libraries still exist.

Yeah, they sure do.

And they're still free.

Yep.

And you can still gain a lot of knowledge, a lot of know how, a lot of things from going to the library. Again, don't discount going to the library.

You're getting up and taking action, which feels much better. I just thought of a tenth one. But number nine is be patient and persistent. Consistent effort. Make consistent effort to explore and develop your talents. Stay positive. Maintain a positive attitude when your progress seems slow. Reflect and adjust periodically. Reflect on your journey and adjust your strategies as needed.

I love it. I love it. The being patient is a tough one. James Clear wrote a book called Atomic Habits that I'm a big fan of. He talks in that book about falling in love with the process and not the results. Fall in love with the process. Be patient with yourself. You got your whole life to figure it out and it's going. It may take your whole life to figure it out, but understand that you're on a journey and make consistent progress and consistent effort. Stay like you said, keep a good, positive attitude if you can. Don't discount the times that you're down. Feel that, understand it and see where it comes from. But keep moving forward and stay positive and keep moving forward and you'll reach a time where you look back and you say, wow, I learned so much through this process. I really like this mindset of Be patient and persistent, Kurt.

Yeah, it's not my best quality. I know. I was always frustrated and wasn't patient at all. I remember going into the HR office about six months into my customer service job at this bearing manufacturing and saying, okay, what's next for me? Just out of college, dude, you got to be here for a year. That ended up turning into three years. But yeah, I was never patient. But here's the good thing, Joe. I'm going to bring number 10. You brought faith into it. I'm gonna bring faith into this. That was my prayer every day. Please bring me interesting lucrative work. God, please help me find my way. Show me the way. Those were my prayers all the time. Consistently help me raise my family. Let me make enough that I can do this by myself. My wife wasn't working. Remember when the first baby came and second baby came, all those things, Prayer was a big part of that. And I think again that focus to what you're trying to achieve. You called it gamify. And I'll even talk about the universe. When you're focused on something and you're pushing and taking action, little serendipity moments happen. They've happened in my life. And I am sure it's funny, you know that whole story with the gorilla when they have the people looking and focusing on something in the room while the gorilla's walking by. If you're focusing on something, you're going to see just that. You gotta widen your path and see the gorilla walking by.

And I agree where wherever you are in your faith, whether you have faith, whether you don't have faith, it doesn't matter if you put it out there and you tell whatever. Even if you're talking to yourself and you say to yourself, I just want to. I just want to go on a different path today. I want to find a different path. Help me to find a different path. And whoever you're talking to, it could be your. I personally think it's God, right? But whoever you think you're talking to, it could be yourself. It could be your self conscious, it could be the rock next to the ocean. Put it out there, man. Put it out there. Ask the universe to help you along this path. I think you'll be surprised what God does for you. I think you'll be surprised what prayer and putting it out there does for you. Because you're right, you. When you send it out there, it's coming back to you, dude.

You'll hear things that you normally wouldn't pay any attention to. I swear I've told you this story when I was sick and tired of the job I was doing still in the it. This was only about seven or eight years ago. I walked past the manager, we say hi. We're all. He was a. An executive at our company, but he was my manager years before at another company. We had a really good relationship. I could have swore he said the word SharePoint to me. And then I thought about it later. It forced me to go look into jobs at our company in that technical area. And sure enough, reporting to him was this job that I'm doing now.

And love that story. I love that story.

I think I imagined it. I don't know what it was, Joe, but I think doesn't matter. Again, talk to people. Don't hide this. You can talk to everybody. Talk to your family, friends, pastor, let everybody know you're ask advice.

But the thing that you did that's most impressive to me, Kurt, is you walked by this guy and I know the story and you thought him, you thought you heard him say PowerPoint. But what did you. What happened next?

I went right back up to my desk and searched the job postings.

You took action.

Yeah, right, exactly.

Now, who knows where that could have led, right? You may not have said, you may not have saw anything about PowerPoint or. But that action could have led to something else.

Yeah, right.

Who knows where it was going to lead? Had you not taken that action, you would not have the job you have right now.

I think you have to have a level of discomfort, maybe a high level of discomfort in what you're doing to have you to. To when you're going to take action. Like I was at a point where, yeah, I was at enough level of discomfort, where my ear was open. I was receptive to something whether I imagined it or not. The funny thing, I went to those interviews and I never reached out to this particular guy for any help. I interviewed with the people that I was supposed to interview with and I didn't get the job that they had posted. But somewhere along the interview process, they asked me, are you technical? Because it was. They had posted more of a leadership role. And I said, yeah, I'm technical. And I proved it in the conversation. I said, well, you know what? We're thinking of doing a little different direction. Would you be interested in taking hold of this particular other job? And I was like, yeah, I would. That's perfect. I'll do that. Just because you never know what direction things are going to go. Just gotta be open, right?

But it's important man. Don't wait for your passion. Don't wait for your calling. Don't wait to try to sit there and figure out what you're. What you want to do next with your life if you find yourself. And this can be. Quite honestly, Kurt, this can be debilitating. People can get. Can get caught up in this mindset of just trying to find their calling or trying to find their passion and not wanting to take action. And it can be. Quite honestly, can. It can be depressing. I've been there. I've been there recently. And the most important thing that you can do is just take action, follow something, figure it out. Figure out that small, little, tiny thing that you can do right now to step in that direction and see what happens.

Well, There you go. 9.

This was good, Kurt. Thank you for. Thank you for bringing this. These nine steps. And then the bonus step of faith, man. I. I really appreciated that this was a good show, and I, quite honestly, I kind of needed this.

Really.

Yeah, Yeah, I thought it was. I thought it was good to force me to reflect on what brings me joy and where I get lost in time and where I really feel alive and what brings me alive.

Yeah.

And the path it took me to. To that. I appreciate this. So thanks, brother.

Thank you. All right, we're into our next section. What was your win for the week, Joe?

Well, you know, I just got off of a trip to Europe to develop a strategy to capture more business in Europe from the European countries and work with my team there. This week, I implemented the very first steps of that European strategy. And this week, I was challenged with maybe delaying a couple things here and there. I was challenged with taking actions that are outside of the process commitment that we made. And I pushed back on both of these. And I said, no, we're not delaying this process. And the. One of the pushback, well, it's redundant. We've already done that. We did that a couple weeks back. Why do we have to do it again? And I said, we have to do it again because it's part of our process. And it may feel redundant, but we're going to stay in the process. So we're going to do this. Although we did something very similar month or so back or a couple months back, whatever it was, because it's part of the process. And the most important thing right now is for us to build good habits, for us to build a good mindset where we stay within the process. These are the actions we've committed to. And if we're going to go outside or if we're going to take actions outside of this process for some other shiny object, some other loud buzz, whatever it might be, it better be darn good. It better be a darn good reason because we're not taking actions outside of this process. And it's so funny. We're recording this on Tuesday. Okay, Tuesday. So it took two days of us implementing our strategy for somebody to push back and try to move outside of our plan. And I said absolutely. No, I pushed back and I said we're not going to delay and we're going to, we're going to take action within our process.

Good for you. Yeah, that's important. Make remind me of Agile software development. There is a very specific process that can feel tedious at times, especially in the beginning. You gotta, you're gonna change this culture that you're trying to do. March on a path, stay within the process. Awesome. How about yours?

What was your win for the week?

Not as deep as yours, but I've had these three trees right outside my bedroom office here that have threatened my life for, it seems like too long, especially the wind blowing and winter coming and they were getting older and I felt one big branch come down and hit the ground really loud. Rather recently we had three trees cut down next to my house. My dad was really helpful with that. I think I told you the story. Come to find out, he knew somebody that he'd worked with in tree cutting years ago and him and his son still did it. They gave us a great price, came up in a day, took care of those. I was out back cutting and stacking myself. My gosh, I found out I'm out of shape, Joe. An hour of that and I was ready for the infirmary. I'm telling you, dude, that's fun, but I made some progress. I'm just going to take my time. And I've been burning wood out back too, trying to reduce the. All the sticks laying around my yard. But yeah, excited to have those dead trees out of here.

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. There's something special about physical labor, right? Even if we're out of shape and we need to take a break here and there, there's something special about working in the dirt, working with sticks and working with trees, and there's something special about that and every chance I get, although I have a condo now and I don't do it as much as I, as much as I used to, but still when I get a chance to cut something down or dig something up, when I do that, I always feel so much better for it. There's something just special about doing that kind of work.

Yeah, I've always liked chopping wood. When I used to live at my parents house, I did a lot of wood chopping for the stove. All right, your resource or tip hack for this week?

Well, this is something cool for me. I don't know how new it is, but I recently discovered it. You know how much I love AI. We both love AI. We love the tool, the tools that AI is bringing us and everything that ChatGPT can do. And I look at it as I look at ChatGPT and some of these AI tools. Like I do a calculator, it's. It's to supplement something that I don't have or something that I might have, but I, that it can do quicker so I can move on to the things that I really want to do. And I discovered in my Android phone and I have a Samsung S22 Ultra, great camera. You can write notes on it and all that other good stuff. But I discovered it has a recording program that will record, then transcribe and then provide a synopsis of what you just recorded. Let me give you an example. I recorded. I had a meeting today with a director in Europe and I recorded that whole meeting. When I was done, it transcribed that meeting word for word, almost, I would say 98% accuracy. And the guy that I was speaking with had a pretty thick English accent, right? English, British, Australian, a little bit. He's got a mix of everything. Pretty thick English accent. And it captured it and was easily 95% accurate. Missed a few words, but easily 95% accurate. And then it provided a synopsis of the whole meeting with action items. And I didn't say anything like, okay, I want you to record an action item. No, it AI recognized that there were some action items and it in its synopsis it provided those action items.

I love this. Yeah, I love this so much. The notes. I hate taking notes.

Yeah, me too. And for me to be able to just set my phone down in the middle of a meeting and it can, it differentiate, differentiates between voices. It says Speaker 1, Speaker 2, Speaker 3 and provide a synopsis of that meeting is a thing of beauty to me because that's what that's always been. My, my shortfall. I can hold a good meeting, dude. I can hold a, I can hold a great planning session, I can hold a workshop. I really can do a good job at that. And I do a good job at that. Where I fall is follow up notes. A follow up plan, a follow up analysis and for all intents and purposes, this does 95% of the work for me. And it's not cheating. It's not cheating. It's like using a calculator.

Right? It's funny.

It's a thing of beauty for.

I think you told me this during our chat on Saturday and I share with you. I'm using the same thing in my Microsoft Teams meetings and using Copilot, which is built in chat GPT for Microsoft tools. And I had the same experience and it blew me away. I was reading the notes afterwards like you said, the action items and it was about two or three hours after the meeting and I had promised to set up another meeting and one other action item and I'm reading through and I'm sharing this with my team because I'm really excited that it's doing this and like you said, like accuracy was really good. And then I went, oh, I forgot to set up that meeting. So let's go to the meeting. Let's, let's do that action item.

Oh, it's thing of you.

So great.

I love these new tools that we have. It's life changing. It'll, it's, it is definitely life changing for me. Yeah, I agree because there are things that I avoid doing because, because I don't want to have to do all the drudgery follow up work that's engaged, that's involved with doing an activity. And if I can have chat GPT or some AI system, record, transcribe and provide a synopsis with action items of a meeting, how much time does that save me to create and to lead, do the work and to develop and to dream and do the real work.

So true. And in my line of work, documentation has always been a developer's nightmare. You want to do the, you want to do all the coding and all the building, but who wants to document it afterward? Now a lot of this, if it's all recorded in a meeting, that's what we were doing. We were going through how this something works and it documented everything we were talking about. It's great.

Check it out. So if you have a, if you have a phone, a recent phone, there's a, you may have to upgrade that. The recorder. Because I had to upgrade the recorder. But once I upgraded the recorder, it's a very simple process. Record it. You'll have the option to transcribe. Once you pick the recording, it transcribes it and provides a synopsis. Yeah, it's a beautiful thing, man.

So my Resource inspired by Joe Taylor from our past Saturday mastermind meeting our good friend Clay. I've been coaching and helping him with some things, technical things on his computer. One of the frustrations and Joe's experiences too. Sometimes he'll have trouble getting his headset working or his screen resolutions messed up and it's at work. I can troubleshoot people and help them because I can see their screen. They in Microsoft Teams, you can share your screen and cuts out so much ambiguity. You can get right to the problem. You can point to where things are on the screen. When you're trying to describe go click on the edit button. This edit button? No, not that Edit button. This edit button. No, not that one. This one. So, but you mentioned, I don't know if you have to remind me, was this the tool that you mentioned, the Chrome Remote Desktop? I remember you mentioned one.

Yep.

Absolutely. It was. Okay.

Yep.

Because I had thought maybe I could use the Mac operating system, but that was a dead end. We'll just say that. So I did go to the Chrome Remote desktop Monday night. I got with Clay. Luckily his granddaughter was in the office because we were struggling get it installed. But she came in in a few minutes. We got the Chrome Remote desktop working and even tonight I met with. I was so excited about this. We're. I was going to teach him how to record a podcast. Using Squadcast was one of the things he wanted to learn and use the script to edit his work. And I went through it and I was able to remote into his desktop with Chrome Remote Desktop. So you can find it. It's a URL is remote desktop.google.com access if you have a need to use that tool.

Yeah, I love this tool and I've, I haven't used it in a while, but I use this a lot. When to give you an example, I have a computer upstairs and I have my laptop. Right.

Yeah.

Two separate computers. The desktop is a pretty powerful desktop, but it's a few years old now. So it's not as. It's not as cutting edge as when I first bought it. But what I would do is I would just, I would have podcasting files or files that I'm working on my computer upstairs. And I would just log into the remote desktop to my. From my computer downstairs, from my laptop up to my desktop. And it's just I'm working on my desktop upstairs. Right. This is really a great tool. I'm glad you used it and I'm glad it helped you move forward because I love this. I love Google and Google has a good product I might want to try right now. And we all three. We use this a lot. Kurt. I know you do. You use squadcast, but we also use a program called Whereby website called Whereby to do on our online meetings. It's. And it's been a fantastic tool. I might want to give Google Meet Google Meetings a shot to see how well it performs.

Okay.

Whereby is a subscription product. Pay a little bit, a modest sum every month to use Whereby. And it's never failed me. It's done a great job. I do my coaching calls through Whereby. But I might want to give Google Google Meet, Google Meet or Google Meetings, whatever it is, a shot. Because if you can combine the remote desktop with a Google meeting and kind of have it have one platform that might be worth giving it given a shot. So maybe I'll. I'll experiment a little bit and we'll see. But I do like Whereby and yeah, the Google remote desktop. Fantastic tool.

You always have some good technical tips for me. You're good with this stuff.

Thanks, man. All right, thanks.

What's your quote for the week?

Means a lot coming from you. My quote comes from Victor Frankl. If you're not familiar with Victor Frankl, he's a psychologist. He wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning. He developed a therapy called Logos Therapy, I think it's called. He was a prisoner of Auschwitz, the concentration camp. And he wrote a book called Man's Search for Meeting. And it's one of those. One of those books that when you ask highly successful people, name the top 10 books that made a big difference in your life, this almost always appears on that list. And it's a. It's not an easy read. There's some rough spots in this book, but I really invite you to pick up Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Viktor Frankl says what man actually needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. And I emphasize a freely chosen task. There's something special about those things that we're striving and struggling for, but we have freely chosen.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

There's so much joy in accomplishing something, especially when it's hard. If you think of all the things that you've ever got a lot of satisfaction from, they were the things that you struggled with and that you overcame. Absolutely. My little half bath is getting closer. Joe, the floor is. The floor has arrived now.

Awesome.

Now if my wife can just decide what direction she wants me to lay it down. It could get installed this weekend.

Just a little bit at a time. Dave.

It's been a long time, but it's gonna be quite a accomplishment when I'm done.

How about your quote?

Talent is luck. The important thing in life is courage. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the man of many quotes. Yeah, we were talking about this. I think the thing that we. You got to do. We talked about taking action. Sometimes it's a little scary and you got to get up the courage to do it. Anybody can have talent, but I'm telling you, the people that persist and love what they're doing and just keep at it and keep at it and keep at it, they'll be people with talent every day of the week.

This is an interesting quote. I have to think about this one for a minute and I think I get it. Talent is luck. The important thing in life is courage. I immediately absorbed the second part. The important thing in life is courage. But talent is luck. What I glean from this is, listen, even something that you've worked hard to be talented at, there is a luck of the universal luck of the draw that you are particularly good at that. Because I guarantee it, no matter how much I try, Kurt, I will never be an NBA basketball player. I'm short, stealth in a 2 inch vertical leap, right? So I can try, right? I can build, I can try and I can come better. But there is a certain luck to what you become talented in things you're born with, especially if you have a natural talent, especially if you're born with it. Talent is luck. But the important thing is to be courageous, to move toward that talent, to use your talent for. To further your life along or to further somebody else's life along, to further society, culture, existence along. I do this now. Talent is luck. The important thing in life is courage. That's biblical stuff.

That's biblical too, right?

Yeah.

Even good on the Bible, the red words, the one that Jesus said, I think he talked about talents. Don't hide your talents.

He's very smart. Awesome. Let's wrap up right there.

How about. Yes, please. Go for it.

Our website is dudesinprogress.com dudesinprogress.com and if you want to send us an email, inquire about either one of our coaching services, you can do [email protected] if you want to ask a question about the show, if you want to make a recommendation on a subject, maybe even you want to come on the show and give us your take, we would love to hear from you. Dudesudesinprogress.com Listen, whoever out there needs this, whoever out there needs to hear about finding your talent, finding your passion, finding your path in life. It's not about finding it and then taking action. It's about making progress. Because progress is better than perfection. We gotta keep moving forward.

Thanks, Joe, for indulging me once again. I think, yeah, this was good for two of us. Sometimes we're just talking to ourselves, but this time I was trying to talk to one of my kids and anyone else who might have gotten something out of that topic. Thanks, everybody.

Good show, brother. Talk to you soon.