We're now in the middle of the year, ending quarter two and starting quarter three. Just how time has seemingly gone by quicker than we anticipated, given our current situation, the Breaking Beliefs podcast has shown us within that span of time how there is still so much more in the world waiting for us. In this episode, host Amy Vetter shares the moments from the interviews during the second quarter of 2020 that were most poignant in breaking the beliefs and noticing patterns we carry in our lives. She focuses on five areas that rose from the interviews— Leading Through Change, Learning, Don't Fear the Future, Relationships, and Following Your Heart—for you to think about as you plan for what's next in your business and/or personal life during these unprecedented times.

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Episode 42: Quarter Two 2020 In Review

Believe it or not, we are at the end of quarter two, beginning of quarter three. It is time for our recap of the interviews that I've had during quarter two of 2020, which we could have never imagined was going to be the way that it was when this year began. We've encountered so much change not only in our businesses, but personally, and have been challenged at a level that we've never seen before. When I look at the interviews that I've had over the second quarter during this show, there's definitely been some themes that have risen to the top where we needed inspiration. We needed to know that we've been through stuff like this before, maybe different in the past, but we have experiences that we can pull from to help us into the future. When I look at those themes, I've seen that we've had topics around leading through change and what we need to do, whether we are the leader in a business or coming through the ranks of how we create a positive environment and help those around us and also help ourselves to thrive and succeed.

Through no intention of what ended up happening with George Floyd during this quarter, we had a lot of talks about being open to learning, diversity, inclusion, what that is meant to different people and how they have incorporated that personally, and with the people that they work with as well. That was an interesting theme that rose up, as well as not fearing the future. There's been no better time to have that theme because sometimes it's hard when change occurs to not create stories and so forth, but instead taking time to visualize what could the future look like and how do we get to the place that we want to be. Maybe that route looks a little bit different. We also had a theme about relationships and how important relationships are in thriving.

Many of us have gone through a lot during this last quarter, myself included. I know that I personally could have never gotten through that without the people that matter the most. Whether that be in my work life or in my personal life and how important it is to cherish those relationships and also nurture them over time because you never know when you're going to need those people, that community. That was a major theme, as well as making sure you follow your heart and your passion in life to create the success that you want. There's no better time than now to be stepping back and saying, "Were the things that I was doing serving me, or is it time to step back and look at where do I need to pivot? What are the things that I need to do?" Going back and reviewing some of the interviews that I had that reflected those themes, one of them being leading through change.

Richard Kopelman

I had Richard Kopelman of Aprio, who is a managing partner. He had some great tips about how to do this because in his accounting firm, things changed overnight. Everyone was virtual. How do you still create the culture that you want and make sure that your clients are being taken care of? Some of the things that he did immediately were to make sure that they were having daily huddles in the company so that they could make sure that everybody was on their game. Anything that needed to be talked about each day was discussed. When you think about putting these quick little meetings together, it's important for communication that we're not only on texts or instant message, emails that we bring in that human component so that when we're going through change, we're in it together.

The other thing that he talked about was making sure that they were proactively calling clients. Every partner was tasked to call every client of theirs once every three weeks. When we get in times of turmoil, a lot of times we retreat and we're all about what's happening for us or our business. We stopped thinking about what does the customer need and what do we need to serve that customer? That can go such a long way even further than we can even imagine once you get through that time of change or turmoil. Thinking about how you go about being proactive and making sure that your customers know that you care is important.

Kimberly Ellison-Taylor

The other theme that I talked about that rose to the top was about being open to learning and also diversity and inclusion. An important interview I had was with Kimberly Ellison-Taylor. We talked about her journey of being African-American in this world of the accounting profession and how she got the examples to enter this profession. When we talked about if we don't see ourselves, sometimes it's hard to know that it is an opportunity for us. There were people in her life starting from a young age that proactively went to her school and started giving examples of what these different professions were that she was not exposed to. One of the important things that she talked about was that they gave examples that she could relate to. A lot of times we forget to communicate in the language of who we are sending a message to. Communicating the way that we know how to communicate, but not necessarily in a way that's effective to the person receiving the message.

When you think about the times where your light bulb has gone off, it's because someone said something in a way that maybe you've heard that idea fifteen times before, but they set it in a way that resonated with you. If you want to change your culture or proactively go out and make sure that your cultures are more diverse, it isn't about waiting to see who applies. It's about how do you go and seek the people that you want to have as part of your organization and what would be the changes in the way that you communicate not only initially, but also when you have them in your work culture? How does that change the way that communication, community, and acceptance happen? That's where we have to step out of our comfort zone and actively go after diversity and inclusion. There's been an awakening this time with George Floyd. I say this time because this has happened many times and a huge concern is that when the rhetoric dies down, the actions die down as well.

Donny Shimamoto

We have to keep the message moving, flowing, and making sure that we are actively making changes in our organization to not only have an outreach of new people into our organization, but we are going and asking the people that work for us what their personal experiences are without them feeling the risk that they may lose their job if they talk about it. We have to create that environment where there's open communication so that people feel comfortable to expose their stories and their experiences. A lot of times people go through experiences that we don't even know are happening. Because it's normal for us, we don't realize that someone else is being affected. Think about doing that personal outreach. If people aren't comfortable speaking to you face-to-face, that you're sending a survey or something anonymous so that there's a way for people to communicate their experience to them.

The other part of this is the learning. We have to be open to listening, learning, and making sure we're letting go of our stuff. I had an interview with Donny Shimamoto. One of the things we talked about is this belief in learning in order to keep growing yourself personally and in your work life has to happen that you let go of the things that you already believe or have learned in the past that what you might learn new might go against that. Being open to other ideas and other perspectives so that you can be inclusive and you can keep growing yourself as a person as well. When we're going through change, as we are, that we take those moments to stop and take a breath. I know for me during this time in the initial stages of my business is changing, whether it's been my yoga studio or my speaking business, I went into full fire mode.

I was probably working 14, 15-hour days running between the two businesses, making sure that we were converting everything and keeping up with what client expectations were and so forth. You get to a point of burnout. We have to be open about that and also expose the fact that we can't run ourselves that way. Even though I teach it from a human nature perspective, it doesn't happen when you're panicked. It's something we've never encountered before. This was a great reminder as well of stopping to pause, take stock in what's happening, and allow yourself to be vulnerable to the situation that you're in. I've had a number of personal things change in my life at the same time as a business. What happens is you start trying to survive and move forward instead of allowing yourself to be vulnerable to the people around you.

Let them know that you were going through a hard time as well. See how you can use your community to help you because you've probably given to people when they've needed it. A lot of times we get worried to ask for help when we need it, but it's important to be vulnerable. One of the big lessons I had even as part of my business was being vulnerable to my team after a few months of going through all the changes of saying, "Here's the situation on the business. What ideas do you have to help us as we move through change?" I had to be open to listening, to not knocking down ideas of saying, "We've tried that." I can say, "When we've tried it, it's happened like this," then keep the brainstorming going saying, "How else could we go about it?" That's important as you go through these fluctuations in your life that you bring people in are transparent and vulnerable as you go through this.

Tom Hood

I also talked about this notion of continuous learning with Tom Hood. One of the quotes that he had was, "Leaders are readers,” and to be curious and to not be afraid. It's important in these times when we can't see into the future. I'm a cleaner as well, but this is an uncomfortable time that we can't predict what next month is going to be or the following months, next year even. What happens is we start making up what that could be rather than getting present in the now and making sure that we're not creating stories in our heads that haven't happened or coming up with scenarios that are worse than the situation we're in. What we need to do is make the best of this moment and learn, reading books, listening to podcast, reaching out to your network, your community and to ask other people what they're doing as well. This is important.

This would fall into the category about relationships mattering because we need a crowd of people and ideas to make sure that we are growing and growing the way that we think. Also, getting other people's ideas and how we might move forward. If we're trying to move change forward in an organization, it's important to get a crowd of people and their ideas and thoughts and bring them on the journey with you. Many of us have gone remote during this time, and maybe you weren't remote before, or maybe a little bit remote, but not completely remote like you are now. We've had to knee-jerk technology in and go with the flow. It's time to crowdsource to co-create what your future is going to look like because we've all experienced what we've experienced. We need to step back and say, "What worked? What didn't work? What will we do differently next time?"

Make the incremental changes that we need to make in order to keep working toward the future that we want. We may not know what that looks like, but if we try to do that all by yourself, not only is that lonely, but we are going to do things that other people may not agree with. You'll never be perfect and get everyone agreeing with things that you do, but your ideas might be so much better when you bring people along with you. When I talked to Richard Kopelman as well, he had brought up the same thing about how important it was to have communication as he was driving change in his firm from going from a family-named accounting firm to a company-branded name and making sure everyone was bought into that process and how we went about it and the committees he created and the communication of each step as actions started being put into play, getting feedback on that as you move forward.

What it did was allow people to know that the things that they said were important. Even if you aren't going to do everything that everybody says, you can at least address and say, "We heard this. We didn't do that because of X." That helps people to come along on the journey as well. They don't feel like they were ignored, but there was a real reason to maybe external factors that they would have had no idea to consider because they're not in your shoes. This is coming back to transparency as well.

John Wiseman

I had a fun conversation with John Wiseman as well, who is in the music production business and had moved through sets and stages and management of rock bands, including Mötley Crüe. That was an exciting interview for being a rock enthusiast and follower. One of the things that he talked about was how much relationships have mattered all the way through his career to lead to his success. When you look at his story, and if you haven't read it, you have to go back to that episode to learn some of the things that he had to say. He had some great tips on selling as well. One thing that he talked about was some of the relationships from college because he kept those relationships going and kept helping them and they would help him and so forth. Where relationships that he brought all the way through to his career that still helps him now and even from a personal standpoint, helped him too.

The other thing that he talked about was staying true to your word, which goes back to what Richard was saying about trust and communication. When you aren't true to yourself and true to the things that you were saying to other people, people stop believing in you and it makes change a lot harder because no one believes that you have the intention that you're saying that you have. It's important that we don't always craft perfect communication that is from a corporate standpoint that it comes authentically from us as we are moving through business so that people believe in the things that we have to say. We can also talk about the things that aren't going well and where we may need someone's help as well. When we were talking about all this and he was talking about his company, they had over 8,500 people working for them, doing rock concerts, musicals, sporting events, all the things that have been canceled.

One of the things that he was talking about through other stories in his career and how he's applied it, it's about not panicking. This goes back to what I was talking about before is that you have to take it one step at a time, put one foot in front of the other, and know that you were one day closer and this too shall pass. When we can keep that in our hearts and our minds, rather than getting freaked out and start freaking ourselves out instead of getting grounded in the now, what happens is that when we freak out, then the people around us freak out. They start making up stories in their head. If we want everyone to remain calm, we have to remain calm and make sure that we are not only reaching out to the people that will help us but also not panicking and taking those pauses when we need to. That also leads to not fearing the future and visualizing the future that you do want. We don't know anything right now from anything. We have a blank canvas board of if we wanted things to look a certain way, how could it look? What could that future look like?

Sarah Elliott

When I talked to Sarah Elliott, one of the things we talked about was slowing down in order to speed up. Even using my example of how I was going a mile a minute when everything had to change over like it did in both of my businesses, then I knew I needed to stop, pause, slow down in order to know that I'm doing the right things. I'm not working to work because what it started to feel like was that it wasn't necessarily productive work. It was just work. If that is what makes you feel better to be working, but you're driving yourself into the ground, that doesn't help anyone. It's driving the people around you to be too stressed out as well. Those are the moments to take your team, slow down, start planning and reviewing what's worked and hasn't worked and understanding that we are doing as good as we possibly can. We can't expect from ourselves the unimaginable. We're not a superhero. We are human. It's important that we understand that everybody goes through tough times. It's when we are uncomfortable that we learn the most, not only about ourselves, but about the people around us, the business we're in, our personal lives and all the things that shape us.

There's been no other time that I can think of for me personally, but also for many people that we have questioned all of our ideals, the things that we say, our unconscious bias, and the ways that we've run business, all of these things are being questioned. We need to understand that we're going through this for a reason because there's got to be something on the other side of why we're going through these experiences so that we can get to the other side and see the light at the end of the tunnel and why these things have occurred in our lives. There's got to be a message. Usually, when you look back, you will see how things connected and drew you to your next experience or your next best thing. We have to have a belief in ourselves that this is true for us. It's important that we don't doubt ourselves at these times and that we slow down in order to speed up so that we can make sure that we create the future we want.

Eli Fathi

I also interviewed Eli Fathi. This came out as much about visualizing the future you want. He was talking about his humble beginnings coming here from another country, not having any examples, but he had this visualization of what he wanted to accomplish by his 30s. One of the things that drove him was understanding the importance in his life of friends, family, and hard work, which came from his family and watching his family. Knowing that all of these things are what creates success in someone's life. When we go back and assess things and look at where we sit in our lives, it's important to assess how are we doing with our friendships, with our family, with the work that we do and where we want to go with that work. If anything feels off in those areas, it's important that we settle in and decide where we need to spend the majority of our time. If there are other areas where they're good for now, then don't try to focus on every area. Try to focus on the area that needs the most attention.

One of the things that he talked about was making sure you believe in yourself, number one. Part of getting to that, sometimes it's meditation and understanding the bad self-talk that we have so that we can turn that self-talk into positivity. Having that mindset of attitude and action, what attitude that we want to put out, that energy that we create, and what action can we take to get there. We can't expect things to get better on its own. We have to take steps, even if they're small each day, one foot in front of the other like John said of making sure that we are doing the things that will serve us into the future and we'll serve the people around us. Creating more positive energy, but also taking actions that will get us there. What are the things that we need to do first individually in order to help the collective community is where we need to begin?

Byron Patrick

I also spoke to Byron Patrick about not fearing the next chapter and being open to what is next that we need to think about in this open world. He was talking about when he was part of the Maryland CPA Society Committee as a young CPA where he was tasked with, from his task force, design your future organization. That goes back to what I was talking about with that visualization of your future. Let go of everything you know because we don't know if any of that's going to work into the future, but from a future standpoint, can you open your mind and imagination, even if it's pie in the sky, what would you want it to look like? What would you want your personal life to look like? What would you want your professional life to look like? It doesn't have to be real. It can be imaginary.

What's important is once you get that all down, you can start looking at, what things can I start working at one at a time? Always look for what's next. We don't know it all, which comes back to the learning, to always be curious and to keep learning. It's important that as we get older, as we get more experience that we realize that we don't know at all, there are things that we cannot control, which has been proven by this whole time period. What can we do to make sure that we are open to listening, to taking in those inputs and to keep learning more so that we can design what's next or be patient about what's next? Take it one day at a time.

Misty Megia

The last area was about following your heart and your passions. Misty Megia, we talked about her parents and her humble beginnings as well. The unconditional love and support that she received from her parents that helped her strive for whatever she wanted to do in life. There were no limitations on that. Even as leaders, we have to remember that we don't want to put limitations on the people around us. We want to keep that open so that they have the opportunity to strive for whatever they want to strive for or create what they want to create. If we're not supportive in their journey or give them the right education or we throw technology at them, but we don't give them time to train on it and so forth, then those people end up fearing the future and getting in their own way and can fail. We want to set people up for success. Part of that is making sure that you create that support system for the people that you work with.

The other thing that I loved that her parents did was celebrate each day. There's no better time to talk about celebration and gratitude that even though things are hard, we can find things in our day that we can be grateful for. Find things in our lives that we can celebrate. All of us have good things happening too. It might seem overwhelming, but putting in a gratitude practice or ways of how do you create a more positive mindset when things are going back? That's when the challenges of creating a positive mindset. It's not necessarily when things are going good. It's testing us of how we can stay in a positive mindset when things are not going good. That is only you that can control that. If we try to put that on somebody else, we won't necessarily get what we're looking for.

Scott Zarret

I also talked to Scott Zarret about following your heart. He talked about his own journey of how long it took him to find the passions that he had. He was following the path those other people told him to go. It took his future wife one day stopping him and saying, "What is your passion? What do you want your life to look like?" This goes back to the visualization. When we start visualizing our future, how do we make the most of our life? What we don't want to do is find ourselves looking back one day and saying, "I wish I would have done that. I wish I would have spent more time doing this or with this person,” that you want to make sure that you feel that you were living your life intentionally each day.

With the challenges that we've encountered during this time, these themes that I've talked about in these episodes, and you can go back and read any of them, are important themes to help inspire you and think about how do you lead through change? How can you be more open to learning and making sure that we are not learning through books, which are important and learning through discussion, being open to listening without talking over somebody, and hearing people's stories and experiences so we can take those inputs in and start visualizing our future? How would we imagine that life, our business, the way our culture, families look and not fear what those changes might be instead of working on those relationships that we have? When you step back and look at your community and who's there for you, I know that's been a big eye-opener for me in the last few months of people that have stepped up and reached out that you might not even have thought you made a difference to them, and they've come through for you in ways that you can't even imagine.

Those people, if you're reading this, you know who you are. It's been a big opening for me to understand that you can't ask for help when you need it and be transparent when you need to be. Investing in those relationships is important because those people are going to need you. You're going to need them. These are relationships that repeat throughout your life and you don't want to take any of those for granted. As you're going through this moment of opportunity, look at how you can follow your heart through all this. Step back, look at your passions in life and what's important to you so that you spend the time on the right things. When you look back and you connect all those dots, you look back and say, "What a gift that I had this time now to review my life, not fear of the future and visualize, or imagine a future that I have now achieved." 

Important Links:

• Richard Kopelman – previous episode

• Kimberly Ellison-Taylor – previous episode

• Donny Shimamoto – previous episode

• Tom Hood – previous episode

• John Wiseman – previous episode

• Sarah Elliott – previous episode

• Eli Fathi – previous episode

• Byron Patrick – previous episode

• Misty Megia – previous episode

• Scott Zarret – previous episode

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