The Self-Awareness Mistake Costing You Millions in Revenue with Deborah Naish

Teaser [00:00:00] Leadership is not just about managing others or delegating, it's really about how we know ourselves. So this shift to seeing leaders is about my own self-awareness.

Intro You are listening to the seven Figure leap podcast. We're here to leverage rich relationships and smart strategies to take your business to the next level. Here's your host, Dustin Rieman.

Dustin How can we as owners of small businesses, solopreneurs, founder led, expert based businesses, level up our leadership?

Dustin I think leadership is a topic that really gets overlooked a lot of times at the scale of business that I'm operating and many of you listening might be operating, and so I'm extremely excited to have. A bonafide leadership expert, someone with a ton of experience in this field as a whole, who can speak into this for us, for people that maybe don't think enough about leadership in our day-to-day growth [00:01:00] of our business?

Dustin So, Debra Nash is my guest today. Deborah comes to me through, Cassie, she, and if anyone's been listening to this podcast running length of time, Cassie has been a multi-time guest, even a guest host of this podcast. She's one of my favorite people. And so when she connected me with Deborah. I knew right away it was gonna be a winning relationship.

Dustin A winning combination. As we got to speaking and talking about her new book, like I gotta have you on the show. This is a topic that our people need to hear about. So Deborah, I'm really grateful you're here. I'd love to open up and just kind of give you the mic for a few minutes here. Introduce yourself, kind of give context.

Dustin Into your background and then we will, we'll hop in and start learning some leadership lessons.

Dustin That's great. Thank you Dustin. And I appreciate Cassie for making the introduction and our first call. Agreed. It was like instant. Okay. Good connection here. Yes. When that happens. so my background, so I was thinking about it particularly since this is an audience of entrepreneurs solo solopreneurs, is that I started as an entrepreneur.

Dustin Entrepreneur at [00:02:00] about age 10.

Dustin Oh nice. When

Deborah I was my neighbor. Jody and I decided to create a little fun house for the kids in the neighborhood. We lived on a cul-de-sac and we did that kind of weird thing. I don't know if you grew up with this, where, come into somebody's basement at the time and put your hand in the spaghetti and it's supposed to be brains and the cold grapes are the eyes, and you're doing that with the kids, so.

Deborah I say that was the beginning of my entrepreneurial experience. And then when I was 19, I started a business, had a boyfriend at the time who was in a clothing wholesaler, women's clothes, and I started a company called Travel and Fashions. And. I was in college and had friends in their dorm room, set up parties where people could buy clothes at discount prices, and then outside, outside of college.

Deborah Did that for a little while. So that shifted. and my dad's an entrepreneur. He had an advertising agency. He had been in a big company and then. Advertising [00:03:00] agency, but I went from like that small businesses to the big companies. I got an MBA at, Kellogg Northwestern, and started to work for the Clorox company.

Deborah Oh, wow. I was in brand management and worked on Kingsford Charcoal and Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressings, a couple other products, and then I went to the Walt Disney Company. In 1990 and I was there when the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin came out. Oh my gosh. It's like the heyday

Dustin for sure.

Dustin Yeah. Oh my

Deborah gosh. It was, I can't believe I like what are now classics. I was a part of the launches and the buildup of all of those and really got that taste for magic and being able to. Be playful while serious, we were super serious. Like, what color should this character's clothing be? And is that the right word for them to say?

Deborah So that was fun. And then I moved into, kind of went big and then back to some [00:04:00] small, worked at a startup toy company. I was involved in taking them public. And then I was the first outsider, CEO of a family business, a publishing and licensing business. So this range of experiences. And it's informed my work and my, my, what I bring to my client's business is that depth of experience,

Deborah as, as an executive coach.

Deborah And in 1997, so 28 years ago, I left the family business and two friends who were small business owners asked me to help them. Some strategy and building their business. And after a short period of time, I really, I realized that one of the challenges they were having is that they needed to be better leaders.

Deborah They had either people they worked with or contractors, consultants, other people that they were working with. And that's launched my coaching career. And coaching [00:05:00] wasn't such a big deal. There was definitely some people, but I'm now one of the OGs, having done it for quite a long time so that it. My background mirrors my experience as a coach.

Deborah I started working with Fortune 100 companies. I also have high growth companies. I think a lot of your audience maybe have children. Yes. So I work with Happy Family Brands, which is Organic food for children and young families, and then love every, which is a business startup. That's amazing.

Deborah If you have kids from birth to seven years old that are age based, age related products. So that's and. Small business and nonprofits. So that's my background.

Dustin Wow. How, wow. That's, I know we got into some of that in our introductory call, but I guess I didn't know the breadth, like, that's amazing.

Dustin So, yeah, some through lines, I hear there are, I mean, for one, you're, not afraid [00:06:00] of, of trying new things. I mean, like from age 10 to 19, having your own, clothing business. it's like a, I've kind of view it like there's, a mental model of like, zoom in, zoom out and zoom in, zoom out of like, to get a better perspective.

Dustin I feel like that's kind of like your career path and even as you moved over into coaching, 28 years ago, even though maybe it wasn't even like, called that or it wasn't, it wasn't the thing it represents today. it's really interesting that you've had these very large companies like, like Clorox or Disney and then, over into, the coaching world and with really big companies all the way down into family owned companies and even serving as a CEO of a family business.

Dustin Like that's, super rich experience. Yeah. So when. As you go through that and you're reflecting on that, has leadership kind of been a through line for you? Did you have an awareness, even in the early days of Clorox, all the way into launching your executive coaching, that leadership is the thing or is like a really key thing that a lot of people miss?

Dustin Like what's your relationship with leadership throughout this, this long cool career that you've.

Deborah I love how you're [00:07:00] framing that question. Yes. There was something about leadership that was really clear for me, just pretty early in my life, so I was the. I'm not even sure exactly what led to it, but in high school I was the president of my class and the president of the, that's surprising about US sorority.

Deborah So like somehow getting involved in leadership was core in who I am. And I was fortunate when I worked at Clarks and Disney to be able to be part of some leadership programs. So I didn't necessarily know that I wanted to be a coach. I didn't really exist at the time coaching, but that ability to, that opportunity to have those experiences and learn from some.

Deborah Pretty dynamic people led me into coaching and leadership. And I would say, you and I talked about this a little bit before, but if you are [00:08:00] an entrepreneur, small business owner, you might be wondering, is the focus on leadership even valuable for entrepreneurs? Yeah,

Dustin yeah. I think a lot of people think.

Dustin It's just me or it's just me and this one employee or just me and some contractors like, and a lot of our audience and me included, come from a corporate background where it's like leadership and air quotes is like what we did over there and we had these strategic planning meetings and there's like a president I have to answer to and there's this big org chart.

Dustin So like those people need leadership. we people as like solopreneurs, we're all about freedom and all this stuff like. I wouldn't read a book on leadership. Like I'm not a leader. And I think that's a huge misnomer and it's something that we're gonna talk more about. Like, I've had some realizations in my own life and business about this recently.

Dustin so what, yeah, I'd love for you to expand on that, like why leadership is super relevant if you're running a small business.

Deborah It's so critical. So this piece about leadership is only about managing others is the misnomer.

Dustin [00:09:00] That's it. So that's like

Deborah the first myth that we just have to break, that it isn't just about managing others.

Deborah the key question is, do you interact with other people? So I assume the answer is gonna be yes. Yes. Like everybody doing is we interact with other people and so therefore investing in your own leadership is relevant for you. So here's the framework to think about. Are you navigating different demands?

Deborah Are you navigating things that you need to do? Things that your team, whether they're employees or service providers or contractors or somebody else that you work with, your client's demands, maybe you have a board, even if you're a small company, you might have an advisory board. You're juggling all parts of the business, the development of your products and services.

Deborah You're sales and marketing, you're podcast guesting.

Dustin Yep. Your

Deborah funding, financial management, maybe some people management, whether it's your team or outside people, and so. [00:10:00] Keeping in mind that leadership is not just about managing others or delegating, it's really about how we know ourselves. So this shift to seeing leaders is about my own self-awareness.

Deborah how do I, how do we manage stress, frustration, overwhelm, disappointment? How do we show up to others? How do people see us? And taking time to think about how aware are you of others and their responses and their needs. So it could be, again, it's not just somebody who works for me, but somebody that I'm working with, you could be great at all this stuff and that's awesome.

Deborah Then you could get better.

Dustin Yes.

Deborah or you might recognize that you need to pay attention to these areas and more. I work with super successful. Powerful people in leadership roles. There's always room to grow.

Dustin Yes. Yeah.

Deborah I'm [00:11:00] like always in the still growing mode about this. So leadership is about who you're being, not just what are you doing?

Dustin Oh man. That's who you're being, that's a writer downer. I'm actually writing it down here, but Yeah. But who're being, not just what

Deborah you're doing,

Dustin who you're being, not just who, what you're doing. Yes. Like,

Deborah and here's the one piece, then check in on it. But it's easy not to make time for our own development.

Dustin Yeah.

Deborah I learned early as an entrepreneur, and you may do this with the people that you work with, that it's valuable to take time to work on the business, not just in the business. So probably most people know that. But the same is true about us. Like it's important to work on our growth and development, to be really clear about our strengths and how we leverage them.

Deborah What are our blind spots? And then when we see them, they become less blind spots. How do we set ourselves up for success? How do we [00:12:00] learn how to constantly adjust? What's the best use of my time?

Dustin Like, it's an opening Pandora's box in the best way possible of like, and I think you started, what you started with is exactly the limiting belief that I've had where.

Dustin Quote, unquote, leadership is management. And it's like, no, like management could be and sometimes isn't part of leadership, but there's so much more. and I shared with you, Deborah, that, we had a retreat a couple weeks ago, for the people in our mastermind. And so leadership wasn't even on the agenda, but by like, kind of at the end of it, I was like, the huge breakthrough I've had in this time with these all these smart people is.

Dustin I gotta step up and be a better leader. Right. And like, leader wasn't even sort of in my lexicon and things I was focused on. Right. And the way I, it came to me in that moment. And it really is consistent with the things you were just going through too. I sort of envisioned like a triangle.

Dustin and like the base of the triangle is like self-leadership. And then one side of the triangle was team leadership. And then another side was thought leadership. Because a lot of people that we work with, their leadership is not just [00:13:00] within their own organization. They're thought leaders in the market.

Dustin Right. And so. That really started to open things up for me. I'm like, I only thought about team leadership. And I said, well, since I don't have a very big team, I don't, it doesn't apply to me. But that's only one piece of it. And you have obviously way more, robust definition, but like how does that resonate with you?

Dustin Like self team and thought leadership even equation? Yeah.

Deborah Yeah. It's a great way to think about it. And what we tend to miss is the self piece. Yes.

Dustin Yes.

Deborah So just reinforcing the value and if we did the triangle, I'd probably make that the bottom, like the foundation. Yeah. Right. That we have to be continuing looking at ourselves and how are we growing?

Deborah How are we, as I said, how are we showing up? What's important to other people around us and how are we paying attention to that or not? Is it, are we intentional? Are we conscious of it? And so that's kind of the piece. And so [00:14:00] my, my, my own experiences coaching with clients and now putting ideas into a book, what I've identified is there's a lot of things.

Deborah I recommend a bunch of books, but. My focus is on helping people make small shifts that will have a big impact, and maybe I call it like a multiplier effect, where you start to see results right away, but over time you can see transformative results.

Dustin That's really key. Yeah. So I wanted to shift to next. It's sort of the how to, and obviously this is a massive topic. You've written an amazing book about it. And so one of the things we wanna do is point people to your book, level up your leadership. and so, you have so much experience, you have so much breadth of knowledge, both as the employee and the CEO and the entrepreneur.

Dustin And I was a coach to all of the above. And I think you just hit on one of the fundamental, truths about this is like, I think a lot of people would be like, maybe they're sitting here listening and they're starting to become [00:15:00] aware, like, oh my gosh, like leadership is the thing. This is the thing that I've been lacking.

Dustin Yeah. And this is the thing I need to invest more time, money, and energy into. And then they probably, the next question is like, how do I get started with that? It's such a, seems like such a big, Chapter, like such a big deal. so obviously they should go read the book, but, any like, and then we're gonna have more time here in, in a moment to kind of unpack some of these principles, but just sort of any initial, if someone's for the first time kind of feeling this sensation of like, oh my gosh, I really need to pay attention and spend some time on this, like, sort of practical first steps since you're all about taking the small steps and having a multiplier effect.

Deborah Yeah. So I'm gonna presume there's a. High probability that a lot of people who are listening are on social media.

Dustin Yep.

Deborah So if you are on LinkedIn, you can be paying attention, just maybe pay more attention to some posts that you see that are topics that are related to leadership. They might not even, they don't even have to say leadership, but something that's [00:16:00] about personal development.

Deborah Personal growth,

Dustin yes.

Deborah So I just say take the step into where am I paying attention to. Something outside of the functional parts of my business.

Dustin I like that. So like, and I think this, an analogy you said earlier that also stuck with me is we think a lot, we hear a lot of kind of cliche advice, which is valid of like, you should work on your business, not just in your business.

Dustin And flipping that and saying, you should be working on yourself, not just in yourself. Meaning like you're not just doing. Who are you being? How are you showing up? How are you investing in your own wellbeing and personal development? Yeah, exactly. You gotta summarize it. well on You got it.

Dustin You

Deborah got it exactly right. It's kind of like this lead yourself first.

Dustin Yes. This

Deborah idea. Level up your leadership and make it an ongoing practice. So it is one of the concepts I talk about, the gimme in my book is kind of enter the leadership gym. Yeah. Like, just consider it another one of your gym activities where you're building new [00:17:00] muscles and you're constantly in practice.

Deborah So it's not a get there, it's not a learn and done. It's not a once and finished I

Dustin did leadership. I'm done. Right. I'm done. I got it. I took that

Deborah class, I read that book. It just, the mindset is ongoing. Lifetime. Yes. Lifetime learning. I feel like that's a key piece and one of my themes in my book, in my.

Deborah Coaching practice in my own life is the importance of reminders and repetition. Like I might have gotten something once awesome, and then I tend to forget about it and I'm not paying attention. So how am I going to remind myself to remember and then what are the practices? What's the repetition I need to have?

Deborah So that's a, that's a. Framework overall, I feel like I did in my book, was to make simple things, just keep remembering some of the [00:18:00] basics and then some things beyond that. But I think that's just true in our lives in general. how we grow is from reminders of repetition.

Dustin Reminders and repetition equal growth.

Dustin That's my, that's my note on that and I love that. Yeah. So, yeah, one I like to on, of course. Lots of principles and information, and we're gonna kind of have, as we close out the show here in a little while, we'll talk more about some like practical how to sort of takeaways. But the other thing that ma I think makes this unique is I also love to talk about your business.

Dustin Like you are an entrepreneur. You are in business, you are doing coaching. You won Ste, the award, you've written this amazing book, and so there's a lot there. and, but I'd love to sort of get your thoughts on, A summary version of like, what do you do as an executive coach? Like what is your business model in a sense?

Dustin Like who do you serve? And then write a sister to that question will be like, why'd you write this book? And how does that play in your overall business model in a sense. But yeah, I'd love to hear more about your coaching practice, who you serve,what's your favorite [00:19:00] part about it, at this phase and chapter in your career.

Dustin And then we can talk a little more about the book specifically and how that's a part of that ecosystem. Okay.

Deborah Fabulous. So I gonna start with who I serve. So I work with people who are ready to take the next steps, make the next leaps

Dustin kind of leaps. I like that. I like that word. I know's kind of

Deborah related, I'm gonna share a quick story if that's okay.

Deborah Absolutely. The so. When I turned 60 in 2018,

Dustin I was 10 years from now. How do

Deborah while ago already? Decided I so much had been good in my life. A lot of challenges along the way, A lot of frustrations, a lot of things to overcome. But I was also ready for something next, like, what was that gonna be? And I treated myself. I went to [00:20:00] a spa and said, I wanna do something really outside my comfort zone in the physical domain.

Deborah So a lot of, in the mental domain, I was kinda good at being outside my comfort zone, but not so much in the physical domain. And. They offered this activity called Quantum Leap.

Dustin Oh, so

Deborah imagine a telephone pole 35 feet high. So three stories, like a three story house, and you have to climb up it. Little rings, little metal brackets, like one step at a time, and.

Deborah I had never really made it past. When my son was little, we would try different climbing things. I never made it past like five feet. I would always back down. So, okay, so I'm gonna climb off this thing. And then at the top is a small piece of wood, kind of like a skateboard size. A small platform.

Deborah You have to [00:21:00] stand up on top of it, and then somebody's gonna come up behind you. Climb up and stand on that little piece of wood with you. Wow. And then you jump off.

Dustin Oh my. Okay. I wasn't, I didn't know the punchline. That's crazy. Okay.

Deborah So, I did that and it was quite amazing to kind of take that step and that leap, and it has become a really good metaphor for what I was already doing and what I'm doing next.

Deborah So kind of to still continue in my life, to step up and take the next leap, whatever that's gonna be.

Dustin That's beautiful. That's a great story. I love that.

Deborah Great. And that was probably one of the things that then, I did another activity, which I may tell a little bit about later, but it probably was the basis for allowing me to say, okay, I've had all these great years of experience as a coach and in [00:22:00] business.

Deborah Another part of my work included being the, first president of the board and then executive director at my synagogue.

Dustin Oh, wow.

Deborah So I continued coaching, but I did that for almost eight, nine years, and

Deborah the opportunity to say, wow, could I put what I've learned? And the kind of impact that I have with clients one-on-one. Would it be possible to put that into a book? And part of that came about by something I'll kind of recommend to your audience. how to Begin by Michael Bunge. Stainer.

Dustin Okay. Is a book

Deborah I read, a couple years ago.

Deborah We

Dustin may know him from the coaching habit and yes know he's, got the blurb right at the top of your cover. So that's a great endorsement. But yeah, please, I didn't wanna interrupt, but I think if people are like, I know I've heard that name, that's probably from the Coaching Habit. Yeah,

Deborah it is The Coaching Habit.

Deborah He's, and several other books. But this book, how to [00:23:00] Begin, and I hadn't even read the Coaching Habit to be honest, but I connected to him through this book was about creating a worthy goal. Something that is. Thrilling, important and daunting. And the idea being that we can have many worthy goals throughout our lives, not necessarily just one.

Deborah And something about that resonated with me. I started out, my first worthy goal was about how am I gonna build my business? And, but after a couple of month or so, I was like, well, it's not really meeting the criteria, so. I had, and I'll tell you a little bit about building my business,

Deborah separately, but that led me to say, could I write a book?

Deborah And so between the taking leaps and doing some other things and having that impetus to have a worthy goal led to writing a book, which I was in, that I will never write a book camp. Never. I had a couple friends who wrote books. I'm like, never, I'm not doing that. It's not something I'm [00:24:00] interested in.

Deborah What would I say? And I'm so happy that I did that. I took that step

Dustin to do it. Yeah. And it's obviously no small, feat. It is, its own quantum leap journey. And, you're sitting here shortly on the other side of it, because I know the book, just came out. Yeah. not too long ago. Weeks ago.

Dustin Yeah. Two weeks ago. Yeah. Ago. So, yeah, last question. I was gonna say last question in this chapter because I'm personally curious and I think other people will be too. And it is just a great example of. Pursuing a worthy goal. Like I know it's only been two weeks, but sitting on the other side of actually having this thing created and in the world.

Dustin And you've been on several podcasts now talking about it, like what's your reflection on having been through that process? Like are you grateful for it? What did it do for you? How did like tie into kind of your views on leadership at this stage?

Deborah Yes, super grateful for it. many moments of why am I doing this ridiculous.

Deborah I don't wanna keep going, [00:25:00] ready to stop, pull my hair out,self-doubt, imposter syndrome, all of that. And I say that's a really good reflection for whenever we're trying to do something like. Building your business has lots of those same experiences. why am I doing this? Should I keep going?

Deborah Is it time to stop? And sometimes it is. I think that's an important choice to make. But sometimes it is also just to allow ourself to have those feelings and then choose again, am I in,

Dustin do I

Deborah wanna keep going? So, yeah.

Dustin Choose again. That's, man, you got a lot of good writer downers,that, that will, we'll compile in the show notes.

Dustin I like that, that as you're any worthy goal, any sort of large, ambitious project and for anyone listening, I'm sure business is definitely one of those. It's not the only one, but,you reach a lot of low points along with the high points. Ultimately you do get to choose again, like recommit, refocus, maybe reestablish the why reestablish the motivation [00:26:00] behind it.

Dustin And I gotta imagine this, the book writing process, it sounds like that was the latest and maybe one of the greatest, versions of that, right?

Deborah Major. Major, yeah. I definitely felt that way, other points of my life, but a pretty big one. And it's one of the practices. I have a set of what I call foundational practices in my book, and one of them is be unattached to the outcome.

Deborah And this idea of you can also be all in, you can be a hundred percent committed, but unattached to the outcome is about being flexible and adapting. And feeling a sense of freedom, knowing that whatever happens, I'll be okay and I can handle it and learn and grow from the experience and it might not turn out the way I thought it would.

Deborah So that kind of constantly evolving way that we can be with our businesses is pretty important. But you keep going or not, make

Dustin that choice. I love that. Yeah. So I know we, we started [00:27:00] talking about this and we kinda got into the book itself, which. Amazing. and your story was absolutely amazing.

Dustin yeah. To tell us a little bit in this chapter of your career, like, what does coaching look like for you? I know you, you've spent a lot of time now writing a book and you're out promoting that and getting this word out about leadership. Are you still actively doing coaching? Is that like a growth area for you?

Dustin Are you Hey, I got like a couple clients that are perfect and that's all I want to do at this stage, but it just tell us, give us a glimpse inside this stage of your career, which will be forward facing for a lot of folks listening and how you're experiencing that and sort of, what your ambitions are now for your coaching practice.

Deborah Okay. Thank you. Yes. you asked that. I don't, I didn't answer that part. excuse me. I have, I am really blessed. I have amazing clients and I was able to build my business really on referrals. And from just a few speaking engagements, I haven't done any since 20 18, 20 19. Oh, wow. So that's no idea speaking 2018 even.

Deborah [00:28:00] so, I do, I have one-on-one coaching and I often work within the leaders teams. So I start out at the leader level and then work with their teams. I'm gonna continue doing that. I love coaching. It's kind of, it's feeds me. If anybody out there is a coach, I'm sure you can relate. There's something super powerful and amazing about being able to have conversations with people and help them see things that they didn't see before and make some changes and shifts in a situation or in their life.

Deborah So I still am a, executive coach and I expect to continue doing that, and now I'm looking at what else is possible. Yeah. So I am podcasting.

Dustin Yeah. And

Deborah thanks for the conversations that doing it right now. Yeah, I love it. I'm doing it right now and this has been fun. So this may be another way that I. I'm able to share more of the message.

Deborah I wrote the book for the intent, as I said [00:29:00] earlier, to could somebody read my book and it have an impact? And I wasn't sure, and I was fortunate enough to have a couple early readers, some people who knew me and a few who didn't, and. When one person who I had a conversation with, but he didn't really know anything about me, read the first couple chapters, which are about what I call the essentials, mastering the essentials.

Deborah Awareness and curiosity. He just read the first two chapters and said he was on a total rollercoaster, like the ups of like, wow, this is so new. And I can't believe I'm not doing that. And the downs, oh my gosh, I have a lot to work on. I can't believe I have to do that. And I really had an impact immediately.

Deborah So that was what I was looking for. And then I. I've gotten that from a few other people, so I'm encouraged that I should keep going.

Dustin Yeah,

Deborah absolutely. And I should look at speaking [00:30:00] engagements and podcasting and other ways to get the word out. So I'm really at the beginning stages of figuring out what does it really look like?

Deborah I don't know yet.

Dustin Yeah. Well that's beautiful. That's a beautiful place to be. I mean, like you said, you are getting to do the work that you love with the people that you love. You don't really have this pressure of. Going out and acquiring a bunch of new clients. Like you've got your, your stable clients that obviously are getting a ton of value from you on an ongoing basis.

Dustin And, but that's true. And you have a new passion project, a new message to get out in the world. You've done all the work to get this book completed and now you're out able to share it and a lot of different formats and. That's super encouraging for me. I'm kind of looking forward of like, I don't really, I kind of fall in the camp, I'm 46.

Dustin This may change and it may change from circumstances I can't control, but I hope to be in a position where I never want to retire fully. like I want to continue to pour into people, continue to level up myself. and I love the, the container you've created for that, right? Your faith life is a huge part of what you're able to do.[00:31:00]

Dustin I know your family is extremely important. You've got. The coaching practice is stable, and that's not really something you have to pour a lot of new energy into as far as going out and growing and acquiring. And you've, made this conscious choice to like, yeah, take the quantum leap, do the book, and now you've got this whole new kind of energy around a new project and a new legacy really that you're able to leave in the world.

Dustin So, just sort of a summary, reflection from someone witnessing this from my care. Thank you. It's like, it's really encouraging and inspiring.

Deborah Thank you. Yeah. It feels like some moments I look around, I'm like, okay, I'm 67. I should be like doing retiring stuff and I am trying to balance that too.

Deborah And pickleball, say it again.

Dustin Just shuffleboard and pickleball all day. Right. And like

Deborah something like that. And I'm trying to incorporate that into what I do. Yeah. So my husband is retired and so he has time. I. And make the time. So how do I do that? Yeah. So I think [00:32:00] that it is something to look ahead if you're out there and you're, wherever you are in your career, just to think you can keep going.

Deborah And I had a mentor who was traveling around and speaking and, at coaching, into her seventies. Wow. So I think that's probably was a factor in seeing it's possible.

Dustin Yeah, it's in, in reality, it really is a new chapter of leadership, right? This is another time where you get to choose again, you get to sharpen different skills.

Dustin You're trying new things, you're learning new experiences, and it's making you a better leader. And I'm sure it translates over into your coaching work and again, your personal life and, And that, so that's, yeah, it's really encouraging. Well, I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for the book. I think everyone should be reading it.

Dustin as we sort of transition into the last chapter of our conversation here, I'd love to basically give you the mic and, there's a lot of people probably thinking, wow, there's a lot here. I need to read this book. and that's all true. And again, though, sort of in this practical takeaway side of the way we like to provide value to folks, I [00:33:00] know you shared with me some key principles, some key practices, I guess is probably the right word, that people could take and just go start, now.

Dustin And so I'd love to Yeah, give them mic to you, Deborah, and let you kind of walk through some of these key practices that people could take and make this real to them and make this, applicable to their business. And then we'll, we'll close out on the other side of that and talk about how to get the book and how to, get more,

Dustin more from you. but yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on some of these key practices.

Deborah Okay. Let's see if we can get to a couple of these that you can apply right away. One is, see curiosity as your superpower. So both, most of us, most leaders and people overall already know that it's a good idea to be curious, so it's not a new concept.

Deborah Sure. But, recognizing how what it does, it opens up spaces. It reduces our judgment. It helps us see blind spots, and we also, most people know we're not as curious as we could be. So we'll take [00:34:00] Tom, one of my clients, who's a creative dynamic guy, and when his team presented ideas to him, he just had a tendency to cut them off.

Deborah I know what they're gonna say. I know what you're gonna say. Or No, that won't work. The odds are pretty good. Most of us do that some of the time.

Dustin Oh yeah. So,

Deborah and we don't take the time to explore. and then if you are in that room with Tom, say there's more than one person, or you're just that person, you're feeling pretty dismissed.

Deborah So it's easy to happen. Just being more curious can change things. So I. Here's what you can do. There's three core pieces. They're basic. It's, this is one of those reminders piece. Listen more versus jump in. Just deeper listening. Ask questions, things, like how would that work? Tell me more about what you're thinking.

Deborah I love the three words. Tell me more. [00:35:00] Super simple. Easy to remember. And then the third is check assumptions. We are constantly making assumptions and we don't check them out. So is this what you mean? Can you confirm that's what it is? Tom was able to make those changes as are all of my clients, and then they're less frustrated and the team's less frustrated, able to solve issues.

Deborah So those three practices are ask more questions, listen more deeply, check assumptions. And, how, Justin, do you see any place for that to make an impact in your work now if you just were more curious? I also wanna add it works at home too.

Dustin I was gonna say, I think we're, this really started sort of flashing, and in my mind was more on the home front.

Dustin It's,you live with the same people, for the most part day to day. And so I'm thinking of, my wife and our one child who's still in the home. The other two are out. In different phases of, being out of the house, but this, the [00:36:00] asking question part is really what stuck, jumped out to me.

Dustin It's like, yeah. I, it's kinda like you mentally go through this immediate, auto track of like, yeah. you're gonna tell me about your day, you're gonna, we're gonna. We gotta get this thing done tonight. and we don't take our, I'll just say I don't take a lot of times that, that presence of mine and that the same energy that I would use with the client and like point it at my own daughter and be like, tell me more about that.

Dustin Or like, what do you think about that? Or like, what do you think's coming up next and just being curious about her and her day or, the thing could be said of my wife. after 24 years, it's easy to start making assumptions and running into routines. so this one. Definitely resonates, and I think it resonates more on that self-leadership front of like how I show up as a dad and as a husband.

Dustin I think I'm frankly, pretty good at this in the business because it's kind of the nature of what we do. but I think sometimes I exhaust that muscle during the day and then at night I'm not nearly as curious about my own, personal relationships as I could be.

Deborah Great. Great observation and noticing it, and it is something, what I've [00:37:00] seen is people sometimes start.

Deborah Be more curious at home and then realize they could be more curious at work.

Dustin Yes.

Deborah Than I think so just play with that. I'll be curious. I'll be curious. Lot to see what happens. So one more piece about curiosity that I wanna share, that I call kind of my master level, it's like a game changer. This might be new.

Deborah is this idea of, remember it's all information. So whatever happens, see what happens as revealing something about another person. Could be what's important to them, what they're going through about a situation or yourself. And if we can literally use the words, it's all information. It helps us calm down, being reactive.

Deborah So I'll give you an example. Just recently a client had been working a ton of extra hours on a program that involved the community she was in, [00:38:00] and she was furious when a more senior leader in her organization who was involved in the planning of the project did something that was gonna screw up the plans.

Deborah She was totally upset over the top, kind of ready to stop working on the project, and she took her time to feel her feelings. That's another one of the practices. And remember, it's all information. Like, okay, what happened? the senior leader wasn't trying to screw up the project on purpose,

Dustin right?

Deborah Even though it felt that way, that was her reaction. How could she do that? That's crazy. So. Gave her a moment. It's like a reset button. It's all information. And then give you a moment to get curious and ask, how else could I look at this? What was happening for this other leader? And I checked my assumptions, what could we do differently now?

Deborah And she walked away from the edge. She figured out what a next action could be. She learned some things, especially that [00:39:00] things don't always go as planned. Yeah. And I can recover. And the program turned out to be a really big success, but remembering it's all information. When you get that email that pisses you off, or somebody does something that you didn't expect or they didn't do something that you needed, it can just change your energy and change the possibilities you see and the actions you take.

Dustin love that. Yeah. And I think of that as in the, of course, interpersonally like you were describing, but even, as business people, the promotion didn't go as well, or the offer or the workshop I hosted. Right. And like, you feel like a failure maybe in the moment, but the self-leadership lesson is like, there's information here, right?

Dustin This, it's all new information. It's an experiment. There's some results I can react to and learn from. Therefore it's not a failure, it's a learning. Right, and like Exactly.

Deborah Yeah. It's feedback. Feedback. So it's giving me some feedback. So it's just a different way. Instead of saying feedback, it's information that's gonna be a value to me.

Dustin I like that. How

Deborah do I learn from it? Do we have time for I

Dustin was gonna say [00:40:00] maybe we can do one more. I know we're, we got just a few minutes. You got a bunch of these amazing lessons and, people should get the hook to go deep. Yeah. If you wanna pick one more and we can kind of unpack that one and then we'll,we'll wrap up here shortly.

Deborah I'll do one more. that's powerful and simple to remember. It's one of the core questions that I have in the book and it is, what's my role?

Dustin Like that

Deborah so. Sometimes we are on automatic mode and we are just going and going, and we don't necessarily notice that we're the bottleneck. we're not aware of the impact that we're having, or we think that the answer is we need to step in and fix it, and sometimes that's not the right role.

Deborah It might need to be, we need to be a cheerleader. We need to remove some other obstacle for somebody else. We need to do something differently. So asking what's my role is another great tool for when we're stuck or [00:41:00] situation we're stuck in.

Dustin I like that. Yeah, that's really powerful and. Again, maybe it's,a self-reflection time for me.

Dustin I'm like my role in different things in, in, in my business. Of course, in that leadership triangle we talked about, each of those, like even say a thought leadership application, like what's my role here? I don't, I'm not necessarily the quote unquote star of the show. Maybe I'm the supporting act in this situation, or maybe I'm the facilitator in this, situation.

Dustin But then, on the home front too, I think about some of those things like what's. What's my role? as a quick example of that, our son came over, yesterday and was talking about sort of some career ambitions, different ideas. He's 20 years old and I had to be very, measured and like, I don't wanna be prescriptive.

Dustin It's like my role is really in this stage of his life to be an advisor and maybe give him some ideas about how I've done things like this but not be prescriptive because he doesn't react well to that and that, and so I think that's a really vital question that we can all.

Dustin Internalized. So yeah, like two big takeaways, just right outta the gate here with the curiosity as a superpower is [00:42:00] mastering the idea of it's all information. It's like whatever's happening is happening for me in a sense. It's not necessarily happening to me. And there's some knowledge and wisdom to be gained.

Dustin And then what's my role? I love that. That's like, that's a question I'm gonna use in a mastermind meeting,here shortly. 'cause I think that's. That's, that's a key takeaway. So, and recognizing

Deborah that it's, it varies, right? So what's my role? It's not like my overall, what's my job description?

Dustin yeah.

Deborah Or what's my role in this moment? In this moment? Yeah. How do you describe it in this,

Dustin in this identity, right? Because we all have a lot of different identities as leaders in different parts of our life. yeah. Yeah. That's beautiful. I love it. You're awesome. Deborah Nash, thank you for being here.

Dustin And yeah, please tell people if they want, some more Deborah in their life, they wanna get ahold of you or they wanna obviously pick up the book. what's the next best step for people?

Deborah Yeah, definitely. If you can, get a copy of the book. It's an Amazon, it's send you a dueling, it is available where books are sold.

Deborah please connect with me on LinkedIn. my name can [00:43:00] look it up and.

Deborah I also have some free resources on my website. You can sign up to get a newsletter, which I only send out occasionally at this point, but I'll probably be doing more of that, but get on my mailing list and stay connected.

Dustin Love it. So yeah, it's debra nash.com And for clarification, Nash has an I in there.

Dustin So it's N-A-I-S-H. So whether you're going to Deborah Nash with an I in there, uh.com or you're going to LinkedIn, that's the best way to find Deborah. But yeah, you can go find Level Up your leadership on Amazon, and. Anywhere books are sold. And I think, this has been a very small snippet of all the wisdom and all the amazing experiences, and I think what I'll share in closing, Deborah, that I really appreciate is you're very humble.

Dustin For one, you have like this incredible resume and breadth of experience. We didn't even get into the whole Stevie Award thing, but it's extremely practical and your ability to take this, these major concepts and distill them down into a couple key questions that [00:44:00] are practical takeaways for the audience is, is.

Dustin Very special and, very much appreciated. So thank you for spending all the time with me today. Thank you for the relationship that we're forming and growing, together. Thank you to Cassie for bringing us together. Yeah, and I hope everyone goes and gets level up your leadership and, visits debra nash.com for more free resources.

Dustin Thank you again for being here, Debra. Thanks so

Deborah much.