Capitalize on Strengths, Overcome Weaknesses: A Conversation with Professor Craig Van Slyke

EP 34 VIDEO - Capitalize on Strengths, Overcome Weaknesses: A Conversation with Professor Craig Van Slyke

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We're very glad to be having a special guest today. Today we've got Craig Van Slyke. He has a podcast that's called Live Well and Flourish. And I met Craig through the School of Podcasting. He's another person that is involved with that and Always provides us with some great ideas when we have our, our sessions.

And I've been looking for other ways to add value to my podcast. And I came upon Craig's podcast. I said, this is a really good fit for my business clients. You know, those who are struggling with things. So Craig, welcome to the [00:01:00] program.

And I thought maybe you could start by telling us a little bit about your podcast.

Sure, sure. I'm really happy to be here. I appreciate the invitation and opportunity. So Live Well and Flourish is all about using practical wisdom to live an excellent life. And by excellent life, I don't really mean financial success or career success, although that can certainly be part of it. It's all about living a life of virtue and reason, and that sounds really kind of highfalutin and academic y, but what that means is just being a good person and using your head.

And so that's, that's what I'm directed at in that podcast.

It's kind of a deep thing, Craig, but I think what I hear you saying, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is it's all about building the foundation. Right. And I think what I hear you saying is starting with a strong foundation.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, you, you have to know who you are, you have to know what you [00:02:00] care about, what you believe in.

Um, you have to have all of that in place if you're going to live an excellent life. And You know, I said it wasn't about career success or monetary success, but it helps with that as well. You get to make decisions, you get to take control, and it's all directed at. That idea of using your head to live the kind of life you want to live.

And that's

all part of the, the building process.

And I know you mentioned that you would listen to our podcast a few days ago on core competencies. And you kind of thought about, you know, Ralph, I got an idea that I think would really fit with what you were talking about. And you mentioned. And, and help me if I'm wrong here, you'll never be great on your weaknesses.

Right. And when I, when I got that email from you, I said, wow, you know, that is, that is right on because I did this podcast about core competencies, trying to get business owners and individuals to focus on, you know, what's the most important things in our business, but you make a very good point. So I'm gonna let you elaborate on that, Craig.

So this

came [00:03:00] out of a 1999 Harvard Business Review article by Peter Drucker, I believe. And it was called Managing Yourself. It's an excellent article. It's not overly academic. And for those of you who don't know who Peter Drucker was, he was one of the big management gurus. I mean, one of those where Um, if, if he wrote something, I was going to read it because there was going to be gold in there somewhere.

And I ran across this, um, this article when I was teaching a freshman seminar on self leadership. And I'm reading through it and there's a lot of good content in the article.

But one of the things that struck me is he said that, that really the key to managing yourself is to understand what you're good at and what you're not good at.

And until you understand that, you're really not going to be able to properly leverage what you're good at. [00:04:00] And as I was thinking about what he said and trying to make it make sense in my own brain, that phrase, you can't be great on your weaknesses, hit me. And I don't think it's in the article. Maybe it is.

I don't know. But, um, you know, we, I used to coach basketball. I was a high school basketball coach for a couple of years. And one of the things that we always did was We'd get the kids to work on their offhand. So if you were right handed, you know, we'd get them to open doors and, you know, eat and do other things with their left hand to try to get that shored up.

And that makes a lot of sense. Oh, absolutely. Right. But you don't want to, you know, if, if you're right handed and success depends on being just absolutely outstanding with your left hand, you've got a problem. So what, what you need to do is get those weak areas. Up high enough [00:05:00] to where they're not going to hold you back, but don't try to do something.

Don't try to be great based on something you're not good at.

Like I'm, I am not a high energy guy, you know, I'm kind of a mellow, you know, go along. I don't have a lot of peaks and valleys.

That's one of the things I liked the most about your podcast, by the way, is I was on the treadmill and I was like, this is very soothing to me.

And I said, you know what, Craig is, has got a neat niche, I think is the right word to use. And it's just calming to me. But let me, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I just wanted to let my listeners know that this is a great podcast to listen to if you're, if you just want to be calm. It's very calming.

Sometimes that voice is not so great when I'm teaching an eight o'clock class though. So, but, but I'm just not a high energy guy. So I don't want to be a motivational speaker. You know, it just won't work. I can't do it. Um, now there are a lot of other things I can do. So what I need to do is make sure that I can be high energy enough to where it doesn't hold [00:06:00] me back.

But that's it. Don't go after something that requires being high energy. And we could tick off, you know, any of a thousand other things I'm never going to be great at. But that doesn't, you know, that's not going to get me where I want to be. What I, when I examine my own life, what I'm good at is connecting ideas and making complicated things easy to understand.

That's a pretty good set of skills to be a college

professor. Absolutely. I mean, I think that's the definition of what a college professor should really do.

Yeah. And so, you know, I'm sure you had professors that were just absolutely brilliant and you had no idea what they were saying at all. I mean, I know I did.

Oh, yeah. I know this person's really, really smart. But I have no idea what they're talking about.

I'll give you an example of that. I remember my undergraduate at the University of Delaware. I had to take a, uh, mathematics class. I think it was called finite math. And this professor did [00:07:00] these tableaus and he would have about 12 boards up on the screen up on the front of the school.

This, this was back in the old day of technology when you use chalk. And he would start rolling these tableaus and, and all of us were sitting in the, in the, in the seats going, what in the world he does do? I remember this one day we were in class and this was like an hour and 30 minute class. Cause I think it was two days a week.

And he's going through this and he gets in and he goes, Dog gone it. I made a mistake somewhere. Well, that was the only thing any of us understood that day because he had lost us before that. Like, I looked at this and said, wow, and it was so funny. And this is kind of anecdotal towards being a professor.

I remember the first exam came around. He said, listen, everyone's going to fail my exam. He says, but we have a curve. So I was like, okay, well, that sounds good. So I did my best, but, but I agree with what you're saying. And that's the goal of a professor is to really, to connect and to ping, put the things together.

Yeah. Right, and so that's what I, you know, among my few talents, I'm good at that. And so that's what I try to, it's the idea of leaning into [00:08:00] your strengths and not spending time on your weaknesses, other than to get them up to where they don't hold you back.

Which is a great caveat to where we go next, or segue, and that is how can somebody, you know, identify those strengths and weaknesses?

You know, what are some steps they can take to try to figure out what those things are? Because. Until you recognize what they are, I don't think there's any way to work on them.

No, that's right. And, and Drucker has a pretty long term technique that he uses for that, which, which involves, it involves after every decision, putting it aside and then going back in 6 months, 12 months, something like that, and seeing how it worked out and trying to learn your strengths and weaknesses that way.

I'm sure that works. But I'm not anywhere near that organized. So what I try to do is I try [00:09:00] to be brutally honest with myself. So, you know, I'm of a reflective sort. So I think about things a lot and I try to think about what I'm good at and recognize that nobody's good at everything, you know, so it's not a matter of, well, you're a.

bad person because you're not bad at this thing. It's, you're just trying to sift through what you're good at and what you're not good at. And you do need to be reflective and when something, you encounter a problem or, or you have a success, what was it about me that made me successful or unsuccessful here?

Um, and it's the idea of trying to take the role of a dispassionate observer. So it's not you evaluating yourself, you kind of pretend like you're a third party. And

Craig, that's the tough work, isn't it? I mean, that's a hard work. Yeah, it is. Yeah, absolutely. That's a tough thing to do. And, you know, and that's when in my pockets, I was talking about core competencies, you know, I'll see a client, they don't come in and let's say they're a plumber and [00:10:00] they're really good to do a plumbing work, but then all of a sudden they take their business in a totally different direction.

And I say to them, listen, Focus on what sets you apart. You know, as an example, it's a funny example. I mentioned this to somebody yesterday. You know, if I've got a client that's a really good plumber, and, you know, when somebody calls them on a Saturday afternoon, they're there, you know, they're, they're having a plumbing issue, they have a pipe burst, they're there.

And all of a sudden the plumber says, well you know what, and this is a silly example, but the plumber says, you know what else I'm gonna do, I'm gonna start selling hot dogs, and I'm gonna set up a hot dog stand. And I'll say to them, okay, that sounds great and you want to sell hot dogs, that's fantastic.

But then on Saturday afternoon when one of your customers calls and has a broken pipe, and you've got a line of people waiting for their hot dog sandwiches. What's your core competency? You know, what are you known for? And I think it's so easy to get distracted.

Well, no, you're, you're exactly right. And so you can, part of what, um, the, the, you can't be great on your weaknesses idea embodies is you only have so much time and attention.

[00:11:00] You can either put it into pushing forward and leaning into what you're really, really good at, what your strengths are. Or you can spend that time trying to get good at something that you're never going to be good at. I mean, I, so when I was a kid, I played trombone. Oh, excellent. I played too,

but that's cool.

Did you really? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's cool. So, and I, you know, I was okay. I was okay. My younger brother, five years younger than me, started playing trombone. And the first time he, I heard him play, I thought, well, It's a really good thing that I didn't try to pursue a career in trombone playing because he's already better than I am.

You know, now he was, he, that was his strength. He was really, really good at it. He was playing professionally at Disney when he was in middle school. Oh, wow. I mean, he was really good, but it's like, I'm not, I can be okay, but I'm never going to be that good. So I'm not going to go into a career as a trombonist.

You know, I'm going to do something different. And

that's why it always drives me crazy when people [00:12:00] say, well, you can do whatever you put your mind to. And I, and I think we lie to people when we say that, because the truth is you can't listen, I'm never going to be an NBA all star. I'm never going to play professional football, you know, and I think we lie to people.

And you probably see this at the university level, you know, you have parents probably saying to their kids, Oh, you can do anything you want, whatever you put your mind to, go into that career field. But the truth is we need to accept the fact that we all have limitations and we all have areas of strengths and weaknesses.

But you've just hit on the key. So we can, it's really easy when you start doing this kind of analysis and reflection to get down on yourself. Because the list of what we're not good at is a whole lot longer than the list of what we are good at. You know, our weaknesses are always going to be much greater than our strengths, but that doesn't matter.

That doesn't matter at all. I mean, you, you, you raise cattle, right? Right. Absolutely. Sure. You're going to put them on the racetrack.

No, that's not what cows are going to do very well [00:13:00] on the racetrack against the thoroughbreds. That's for sure. Right.

So that's not what they're good at, you know, and, and so everything on God's earth has their strengths and their weaknesses.

And the, if you think about natural selection, this is going to be a little bit out there. Part of it is, you know, you're kind of, they're leaning into, the ones that survive lean into what they're good at. Now they also keep their weaknesses so it doesn't get them killed, but, but that's it.

Yeah. And I, and I think there's sage advice in that.

And, and, and I'll apply it to the business world. And if you're really good at what you do, then do that. You know, I say this to clients all the time when they come and they talk about, oh, you know, Ralph, I, I know you offer accounting services, you know, but I, I handle that on myself, you know, I do it myself.

Oh, I, I'll do payroll myself. And I said, wait a second. I said, why don't you do what you do best and I'll do what I do best. And there's synergy in that and there's value in that. But I think so many people get hung up on, well, let me try to do this. Well, let me try to do this. Well, and they, they, they drive.

And like you said, we're our own worst critics. And we can make a [00:14:00] list, is it SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, you can go in and say, I can list a million weaknesses, but how many people can list a strength? And I think that's where you're going with this is like focus on your strengths and then work on your weaknesses.

Am I, am I saying that correctly?

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and you know, I think we get programmed to also be overly modest. This was one of my finest moments in a job interview. They asked what my biggest weakness was, and I said, false modesty. So that's a good one. That's perfect. Yeah. I didn't get the job, but I got a good laugh out of it.

Oh, absolutely. But I think we need to acknowledge and celebrate the strengths that we do have. You know, God gave us certain strengths, and we need to use those to the best of our ability. But even though he, he also gave his weaknesses and the wisdom to figure out the difference between the two and to, to apply the ones that we're going to be strong [00:15:00] at to make the world a better place.

I mean, that's a, you know, I think that's a big part of what it's all about is find out what you're good at and find out how you can use that.

Absolutely. And in a Christian faith, I think we would call that gifts. And I'm actually going to be doing a podcast here in the next week or two about gifts. And, and I think all of us need to recognize that we have certain gifts.

Craig has gifts that I don't have, you know, perhaps Ralph has gifts that Craig doesn't have. And that makes us all, if we work together, we can really achieve excellent

results. No, that's right. Well, but that's the idea of a team, right? The best teams don't have every member. That serves one role or is good at one thing, you know, if you, on a football team, you know, you've got people that are good at blocking, they may not be all that fast.

You've got people that are good at catching and are fast. You've got, you know, this player and that player, and they all serve their roles and they all have different strengths and weaknesses. I mean, I'm sure you've seen a quarterback try to block [00:16:00] before. Occasionally

they can. Oh sure, that's a joke where the kicker tried to tackle somebody,

you know, that's a trick.

What was it, Gino, uh, what was his name? The Dolphins way back when. Oh yeah. Yeah, that, uh, through the interception,

trying to, well, it's kind of like having, uh, all 300 pound linemen and you're going to put those out as your quarterback and your running backs and your ends and wonder why these 300 pound, I think it was when I was a kid, they were the Washington, the Washington Redskins, they had the hogs, you know, and they were these big burly dudes, you know, and it was like, but, but their role.

For what they needed to do was what they needed to do. That was their strength.

That's right. And, and you, that kind of gets at what I'm talking about is, you, you know, they need to be quick enough. And they need to be agile enough. But they're not going to be as agile as a defensive back or as a running back or a receiver.

And again, I, I think, um, we need to be really honest about our strengths and our weaknesses. It, uh, one of the, when you were talking [00:17:00] earlier, it occurred to me, That the Christian faith also teaches us not to, uh, put our lights under a bushel. Now, I don't know that that was really talking about our strengths, but I think it applies, is, you know, use your strength.

They were given to you by God. I mean, in the end, this was what God, I don't use the words hard, ordained, you know, you were ordained to give, you know, you have certain strengths that benefit humanity. Right.

And, and I don't. care who you are, you have strengths, you know, maybe your strength is just being able to listen quietly to somebody that needs somebody to listen to, um, not my strength, but, but it could be something that straightforward that has tremendous value in the right situation.

So let's talk about how you, how this applies to different aspects, aspects of your life. I'm tripping over my words there, such as career development and relationships and personal fulfillment. You know how, [00:18:00] what we're talking about here is great. Big picture sounds good, but for somebody who's sitting, listening to this, this podcast right now and says, okay, well, okay, that sounds great, Craig and Ralph, but how does that impact me?

In relationships, how does it impact me in personal fulfillment or my career

development?

Well, let's talk about the career development for a second because I think we can make a really good connection there. I don't know if you've seen this Venn diagram that's got what you're good at, what you're passionate about.

And what somebody will pay you to do.

Now I've never heard, that's great, but I've never seen that.

So the, the, what you want to do is wherever those three come together. Well that makes sense. And I'm showing this with my hands, which is of no use at all in

the podcast. But you're talking basically for my, for the people listening, three circles.

Right. And where the three circles intersect. That's right. Is, is that area that we'll call the meat. That's where the meat is.

That's right. And that's where you'll have your most fulfilling career. I mean, I, I got lucky being a college professor because that's solidly in [00:19:00] that intersection of those three circles for me.

Well, Craig, was it luck or do you think that was an ordination? Like, do you think that God was pushing you towards, you know, Craig's gift is being a college professor? I don't think. I'm just not a believer that things just happen by circumstance or happen just all of a sudden. So anyway, not to interject.

No, no, I

think,

no, I think you're right. I mean, I, I, I believe that, that I have this hard to reconcile belief in, um, in autonomy and, uh, predetermination. So which I, I. can't even begin to put

together. Yeah, that's like a scale. Like, I'm not even sure how I would grab a hold

of that. Well, you know, I, I think, and this, this is a really a tangent, um, I think that God lays things out and our autonomy is in picking the path to get there for us.

But I, you know, way smarter people than, than I have struggled with that, uh, you know, determinism versus autonomy, free will argument. But, um, you're talking really your path. [00:20:00] Right. So for me, what, um, it was really kind of, kind of interesting. So I don't know if you remember when you took the SAT or the ACT, sometimes they, some years they'll ask you what you're, what you want to be when you grow up.

Sure. You know, you, you kind of list out, they had the codes and all that kind of thing. Absolutely. And I, I remember putting down college professor. Well, you know, it didn't work out at first. I had, I started on a doctoral program and it wasn't for me. It wasn't the right time. So I'd left and went into industry.

And then 10 years later, I was actually, uh, teaching part time. And I was, I was training for a marathon and one of the guys in our training group was called the deacon because he was a deacon and I was complaining about my job and he'd heard me talk about how much I like teaching. And he said, well, why don't you just teach full time?

I said, well, you know, if you're going to do that right, you got to go get a doctorate. And then he said, well, why don't you get a doctorate? And I spent like the next hour running along [00:21:00] sweating and thinking about that. And before too Light bulb moment. Light bulb moment. Yeah, it really was. It was like, I don't have a good answer for that.

And so I quit my job. I had a decent job. I quit my job, went back to school. And got a doctorate and have never looked back. So, you know, I'm sure God was telling me what I needed to do. I was just too stupid to hear it

for a decade or so. Well, all of us, do that, don't we? It's like, you know, um, my wife mentions this all the time.

My wife is a breast cancer survivor. And before she had breast cancer, you know, she really didn't And I don't want to go too religious, but she wasn't really that connected to God. And she always said, you know, with some people, God, you know, He'll whisper to you. You know, sometimes He'll shove you a little bit.

And she said, then there's some of us that need to get hit over the head with a hammer. And hers was cancer. And when she was diagnosed at 33 with breast cancer, You know, she found God. She found Christ. And it was the dude watching it from the outside was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. But it's kind of like that light bulb moment you had with this person you're [00:22:00] talking about in the marathon training.

He or she, I remember you said he or she, but said to you, Craig, if that's what you want to do. Why aren't you doing it and you didn't have an answer like you had to think about this I'm gonna I've never run a marathon now. The most I've ever run was a 5k It took me 45 minutes to do it, but I was so excited I actually finished like I finished and that was like that's cool.

But anyway, so it's like he addressing you and you didn't have an answer

right, right and When I was thinking about whether or not I should go back to school and pursue that, I did think about what I'm good, what I was good at and what I wasn't good at. And the things that I was good at and the things, I was a pretty good teacher.

You know, I was teaching college classes part time and, you know, I could teach a lot of different things and I could teach really tough subjects and. And, you know, it's like, well, you know, that seems to be something I'm good at. And I really like figuring things out, which is kind of the research part of it.

And, you know, I just started adding up and adding up and I thought, well, [00:23:00] you know, why not? What, what is this, what is this current path getting me, you know?

So how do you think that applies to relationships? You know, that's, let me give you a little bit of background about me. I believe that everything in life is about relationships.

I say to customers that if you want to have a successful business. Make a connection with your customers. Well, how do you do that? You build a relationship. You know, most of what everybody does is a commodity. There are other college professors, there are other accountants, there are other tax people, but it's the relationship that makes a difference.

So how do you use that whole, uh, what we've been talking about this whole, looking at your strengths and weaknesses in a relationship? Uh, that's a good

question. And I'm not sure I have a great answer for it, but one of the things that occurs to me is by being honest about what you can and what you cannot do well.

You know, if you want to damage a relationship, and you know this, you're in business, you advise business owners, don't, don't deliver, you know, don't deliver. And [00:24:00] if delivering something is beyond your capabilities because of what your strengths and weaknesses are, then it doesn't matter how much work you put into it.

You're not going to deliver. Absolutely true. If you want me to fix your car, I can spend from now until the end of time trying to fix your car and it's not going to work. You know, so that is not one of my strengths and, but I'm sure there are a lot of mechanics out there. If you want, you know, somebody to explain generative AI to them, they could study from now till the end of time and not be able to do it.

And so both have value. Matter of fact, being a car mechanic probably has more value than being a college professor most of the time. But, uh,

But again, we go back to what are your strengths? What are your gifts? And you're absolutely right. And it's funny. I guarantee you would ask the car mechanic and they would say, man, I really wish I was a college professor or where I wish I had the ability to, to, to pull things together and explain them in ways that other people can [00:25:00] understand.

So it, I think you need to be just about what your strengths and your weaknesses are. And then again, lean into those strengths in your relationships, especially your business relationships. Um, and it's. I think you can extend that to personal relationships as well, but, uh, you know, that's a little bit beyond my

expertise.

That's a discussion for another day and with other people, I think.

So the next question I have for you, Craig, is what advice would you give someone who feels overwhelmed? By their weaknesses and unsure of how to move forward because you were very honest and we were honest with each other that it's real easy to write a whole pad of paper about our weaknesses, but that's great.

You can identify him. But what do you do with a person that gets overwhelmed by that?

So I would do a couple of things. I would list out my strengths before I even thought about my weaknesses. And then think about how do I want to leverage these strengths to serve my [00:26:00] purpose in life. I'm, I'm a huge believer in being driven by purpose.

My, my purpose is to help other people live successful, meaningful lives. That's what I want to do. And so, you know, think about your strengths and how those strengths can help you serve your purpose, live your purpose, and then go through and identify some weaknesses that might prevent you from leveraging those strengths.

Like, like if I couldn't, um, speak very well, that's going to be a

problem for me. Absolutely.

Because you're in front of a class, you know, if you can't speak well, people are like, wait a minute, not to take a sidetrack, but I had a professor at the university was from Eritrea and he had a very strong accent.

The thing I really respected about this guy is the first place. He said, listen, you will not understand some of the words I use. And it was an auditing class, very technical words. And he said, here's what I'm going to do. If I, if there's somebody raises their hand, that means you don't understand what I'm going to write it on the board.

So he figured out, okay, [00:27:00] I have a strength that I can teach. I have this Eritrean, uh, accent. But he found a way to improve upon his weakness, I guess that's kind of where you're

going. Right, exactly. So he found a way to make that weakness, so he could overcome that weakness, or mitigate that weakness, so that it didn't hold him back from applying his strength.

I mean, and there are, there are all kinds of ways you can do that. So.

If you're in business and you don't really have the head for bookkeeping, you hire an accountant.

Partnering. Partnering with people. That's right. Building teams, right? I mean, that's the truth. That's right.

If you're, you know, if you're not good at creative work, you hire somebody to do the creative work, to develop your logo and your ads and that sort of thing.

Um, so you, you, you recognize. That you've got these weaknesses and pick out the ones that are really going to [00:28:00] hold you back and say, how, how am I going to either get my skills in that area up to a minimum level where they're not holding me back, or how am I going to partner with somebody else to where they're not holding me back?

And I think what I hear you saying is a lot of times, and I'm going to apply it to small business and business people is they're very good at looking at their strengths. But they're not so good about identifying their weaknesses and figuring out ways to work on those weaknesses. Is that what I hear you saying?

Exactly.

So I had a small, um, business for a little while, a computer dealership back in the early days, we sold computer aided drafting systems. And I was pretty good at figuring out how to take the technology and apply it to the client's problem. I could spec out exactly what they needed. I could figure out where they needed to invest and where they didn't need to invest.

I was really good at that. That was your strength. I, I was not really good at going out and beating the bushes for business. I was abysmal at [00:29:00] any kind of record keeping because I, not my strength to begin with, but it also wasn't something that excited me. So what I should have done, and I eventually did, is I should have hired an accountant.

You know, okay, tell me exactly, set up the systems for me where I can do this without having to put any thought into it. And, and then you take over and do your thing so I can worry about this other stuff. Uh, if I, if I would have spent all of my time trying to figure out those systems and put them into place, I wouldn't have had any success.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

I mean, I meet with a lot of clients that are getting ready to start a business. And the first thing I say to them is, first of all, number one, you're going to work harder than you've ever worked. Number two, you're going to work more hours than you normally work. Number three, you're going to make less money than you think you're going to make.

And number four, and this is the biggest one. Surround yourself with strong foundational people. What I mean by that is an accountant, a lawyer, a salesperson. If you're not good at selling, but you're great at turning the wrench, you can [00:30:00] find ways to make that work. Right. And I think people lose out on that.

Like, they think, oh, I gotta be able to do it all. Like, I was talking with my massage therapist yesterday, and she's new in business, and I did a podcast with her a few weeks ago. And she goes, you know, I really need to figure out how to do your job. And I was like, her name is Amanda. I said, Amanda, you don't need to figure out how to do my job.

It doesn't make any sense for you to figure out how to do my job. She goes, well, yeah, but, but I listened to your podcast about core competencies. And you said, I need to learn all these core things so I can run my business better.

I said, yes, you need to have an understanding of them, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with surrounding yourself with valuable assets.

Of people who can show you how to do things, you know, at a school podcasting, I'll throw Dave Jackson under the bus for a second. He says this frequently.

He says, you can invest time or money. If you've got plenty of time, then do it. You know, I've had attorney clients as an example. Like, I had one guy, it's been 20 years ago, he was an attorney.

And I, you know, he's going back and forth, I did my bookkeeping, I do this, and you charge too much, and I said, hold on a second, dude. Let me ask you this. What do you [00:31:00] charge an hour? Yeah, what's your billable rate? He says 250 an hour. I said, okay, sounds good. I said, how many hours last week did you spend doing accounting work?

He said, 10. I said, so you just lost 2, 500. I said, how about I charge you half of that? Would you be happy? He says, Ralph, I never thought about it in those terms. But that's the thing.

Like if we don't examine ourselves and that's, you know, I talk about reflection and you mentioned it too. And I think that's one of our problems we live in today is people don't take time to reflect.

I think we're so busy watching things going on Facebook and Twitter and, and everything's happening and we're putting out fires, especially a small business or putting out fires, but we don't take enough time to reflect. Do you agree with that? Oh,

absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.

But, but I want to touch on something else that it's related to what you just said.

One of, so never met this attorney, obviously, but I could just imagine that attorney being frustrated by trying to do the accounting

work. Oh, and it was a disaster. Craig, I look at his books and I'm like, dude, were you sleeping when you did this? [00:32:00] Were your eyes closed?

So, so he wasn't good at it. He probably hated every second of it.

And what that does is because you work hard and you don't get good at it, you feel like more of a failure. And it just puts a magnifying glass on those weaknesses. And I, I think one of the keys to really living a flourishing life is to understand that. When, when my wife and I were getting serious, she asked me if I was handy and I said, no, but I can write a check.

And I have no macho desire to be able to fix everything in the world. I am not good at it. I hate every second of it. You know, if it's an emergency, I can probably bandaid it, but I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I make an okay living. So I'm going to hire somebody that's good at it instead of, you know, just feeling like we've all done this, right.

You're trying to fix something. And you just can't fix it. And you know that it's simple to fix, but you just can't [00:33:00] do it. Now, Craig, how long did

it take you to figure that out? Like at what stage of your life? Did you

figure that out? The first time I tried to change oil on a car. Now that's a funny. Yeah.

I mean, back, back in the day, you could work on your own cars. Sure. And so I, my, my two forays into fixing my own car were, I was changing the oil, which is about as simple as it gets. I've tried one time I, I stripped the oil plug. Oh, not good. So, you know, here's this thing that's as simple as it gets, and somehow I screwed up.

And then I tried to replace the head gasket. So my brother was, my older brother was helping me, and we did all this stuff. We did everything we were supposed to do, and I fought through it, and I tightened everything down, fired the car up, and water just goes shooting out of the heads because they were warmed.

Right. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to end up paying exactly what I would have paid if I'd just gotten the mechanic to do this to begin with. I am done. I'm just not doing this

anymore. Yeah. And I [00:34:00] think there's value in that because like use your lesson with stripping the, uh, the oil thing, right?

Oil change costs 30 bucks, 40 bucks, whatever that is. Right. How much did it cost you to get that fixed? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it was probably eight bucks back then. But yeah. Exactly.

And that applies to, and that applies not only to business people, individuals too. Like if you, as an individual, if you're trying to do everything, you're not going to do it well.

Right. No, that's right. That's right. And well, and I think, um, there's another little lesson there is it's okay to experiment and then acknowledge if that experiment fails. I was just working or just wrote a script for an episode on failure. And, you know, I, I tried that, gave it my best shot, turned out poorly, I'm going to acknowledge that's, that's one of my weak areas and I'm done with it.

And so I put my energy into making enough money to where I could pay somebody to fix the car. Absolutely. Which is much better time [00:35:00] spent than me trying to get to where I'm, can fix a car, uh, even if I got good at it, I hated it. So why do it?

So if you're a small business person and you recognize you have weaknesses, then you think it's okay for a small business person to say, listen, here's a potential customer.

Look, I'm not good at paperwork. So it's okay. It's okay. Uh, you know, I'm great at doing what I do, but I'm not great at paperwork. So I enlist this other person's assistance or the, you know, push on me a little bit or something like that. I guess it's just a matter of being self reflective and then once you're self reflective you kind of push that back out to the universe, right?

And say like it's okay to admit to somebody that you're not good at this.

Yeah. Well, right and And you're just going to end up shooting yourself in the foot If you don't acknowledge that, um, we've, again, we've all had this experience where you hire somebody to do something that's beyond their capability, or they're too busy to get it done.

Um, and, and it always turns out poorly and it always hurts that business owner's [00:36:00] reputation. And so you're much better off to say, I do this. I, I don't do this other thing. You know, if you want this other thing, I've got somebody I can recommend to you that's really good, but I don't do it because I'm not good at it.

And I've seen so many businesses fail because of that. They're starting off, you know, they, they, they're doing a particular job and somebody comes in with something that's out of left field and they say, Oh yeah, I can handle that. They know they couldn't handle that. And they get way in over their head.

And they weren't willing to admit that this is beyond my pay grade, because I think there's almost a bravado that goes into this. You know, small business owner, I'm going to tackle the world, I'm going to climb every mountain. But that's really not effective in the long run, is it

Craig? No, it isn't. And if you think about people that are really good at something.

It's, they're really good at something. They're really good at a narrow band, and they're [00:37:00] not known for everything. They're known for that one thing. Um, you know, and, and it can be more than one. I'm exaggerating a little bit. I'm not saying it's just one thing. But, but the experts are experts in one thing.

This is a big problem with society in general, is we take somebody that's an expert in one thing and treat them like they're an expert in everything. Uh, and,

and we can probably all we almost assign them a godly. Uh, feature, you know, like, hey, they can do everything.

Right. And, and we can probably tick off people in our minds that would fall into that category.

Um, so, so I, I, I do, to, to kind of bring it back, I think we need to be honest with ourselves. That's, that's the key to all of this. If you're not honest with yourself, and if you don't make this kind of dispassionate Uh, observation about what you're good at and what you're not good at. You're going to have a rough road.

Uh, you could spend a lot of time being very frustrated and not [00:38:00] making any progress. Uh, I, let me give you another analogy. I have a pickup truck. You probably have a pickup truck

too. I do. I have one for the farm.

It's, it's great for hauling stuff around. It's great for getting out of the mud. Gas mileage is terrible.

It's hard to park. It's not the easiest thing in the world to drive. You know, they're, they're not zippy on the corners.

And on a bumpy road, your wife will complain as you're driving down the road as you're both bouncing up and down on this chair. Absolutely.

And, and so, you know, a pickup truck is good at a fairly narrow range of things.

But if you have the need for those things, there's nothing better than a pickup truck. It's true. You know, if you're going to be, you know, driving a lot of in town traffic and parking in tight spaces and, you know, you need, uh, this or that or the other, you need a different kind of vehicle because I always joke, said, yeah, you're, you're, you're a little, [00:39:00] uh, horseshoe goes fast, but how many bales of hay can you haul?

Exactly. You know, and, but, but really, if you see these vehicles that try to be everything, sometimes you're not great at anything.

Yeah, you're right. It's funny. We were driving the other day in the snow. My wife said, you know, does anybody use snow tires anymore? I said, no, because we have all weather radials now.

So it kind of goes along with what you said. But the truth is, I imagine in certain parts of the country, there are people that probably still do put snow tires on because they get so much snow that they have to do that. And

the all weather tires are not going to be as good on snow as snow tires. And they'll be better on rain, maybe, or in dry conditions, but yeah, it's um, you know, there's, there's value in being a generalist, but there's not greatness in being a

generalist.

Well, that's a fact. And I think that you will find, especially business success, when you're a specialist. Would you agree with that? Yeah.

I mean, I mean, you know, there, there are people that are [00:40:00] good at being good at a lot of things, but you know, they're never, they're, it's really hard to see those people as being really great.

And maybe, you know, maybe being great is not something that's of interest to someone, but I think you want to be great at being a human being. You know, forget about career success, forget about financial success. You really should want to be great at being a human being. And that requires knowing What your strengths are and what your weaknesses

are.

And that leads me to the last topic I have to discuss and that is, I found such value in your podcast, Craig, and that's why I want to, I want other people to understand it.

So I want you to take a few minutes and, and talk about your passion in that and talk about, you know, how that's going to help people and what your goal is, I guess, big picture and then how that, you know, how that applies to people listening and you know, what are your plans for that?

So what, what motivated me to do the podcast was really probably [00:41:00] three things. One is it aligns with my purpose to help other people lead successful, meaningful lives. Um, you know, the podcast is all about how to do that. And by success, I mean deep success, not the shallow, I mean, financial success is great.

Don't get me wrong, but that's not what I'm talking

about. And you have action items. I will mention to people like you have action items in your pockets and not just these glowing things like, Hey, go feel this way. You put it. You put. Bullet pointed action

items. Right. Right. I try to have virtually, not every episode, but close to every episode of the full length podcast has three, three things to do this week.

Um, I also like thinking about these kinds of things. So it, it kind of forces me to think and reflect more deeply on some of these big questions. Um, and then it also helps me practice taking these. Big questions and these [00:42:00] obscure things from philosophy or psychology and putting them together in a way that I can communicate to virtually anyone, which goes back to my strength of being able to take complex things and make them understandable.

And so those three things kind of lead me to keep going on the podcast.

So I'm going to, I'm going to turn the microscope around and I'm going to, I'm going to say to you. So in your podcast, what do you think your strengths are? What do you think those things are that you really find strength in?

I think the ideas are really good, you know, and they're actionable.

So when I talked earlier about what the podcast is about, it's about practical wisdom. So practical wisdom is practical because it is practiced. You know, it's not just some idea that's out there. It's something that you actually put into action. And I think I'm good at that. Finding ways to connect and then distill that down to something that some, to something that someone can actually [00:43:00] do to help them live a more flourishing life.

But my weaknesses, you know, I, I'm not, like I said, I'm not the most energetic guy in the world. And so my podcast has got a very mellow. Uh, kind of a vibe to it. It's

not going to be a very that's a strength though, too, because we live in a world where everybody's shouting at us from all directions, right?

So I'm going to I'm going to say to you, I don't know that that's as big a weakness as you think it might be.

Well, I mean, and it's, you know, if even if it isn't, I can't be. The rah rah guy that's, you know, all excited. And I don't know if you ever listened to David Hooper, um, podcasting coach. You know, he's a high energy, really enthusiastic guy.

Rapid fire. You know, I couldn't do that. That's not my strength. Yeah. Um, so I, I acknowledge that. Um. I do try to take some of my weaknesses [00:44:00] and make sure that they don't hold me back too much. Like, I could very easily get incredibly academic around some of that stuff, some of the stuff I talk about. And I have to, I have to rein that in and make sure that I'm not, you know, using these obscure terms and going down deep rabbit holes and that

sort of thing.

Do you find yourself sort of doing a, a continual revision of what you've put into your, I'll call it a script is what I use, but a script of, I better back it up a little bit because I'm getting a little too deep there.

Sometimes, sometimes I have to say, okay, I'm going to put that aside, uh, for now, but you know, I'm coming up on a hundred episodes.

And so I've kind of gotten to where I'm a little bit better at writing it the way that I want to say it to communicate certain things. Uh, but, but I'll give you. Some other examples of weaknesses, I'm not good at the marketing part of it. That's

hard. That is hard. That's hard work.

The, you know, the [00:45:00] down, and, and I had to really, um, kind of come to some terms around that because we, we all want lots and lots and lots of downloads and I do not get lots and lots and lots of downloads, um, So I had a choice.

I can either put effort into the marketing and, you know, try to learn that and try to, you know, do ads that are really exciting and that sort of thing, which is not going to turn out well for me, or I can just accept the fact that I'm never going to, you know, have huge download numbers. And that's okay.

That's okay. I'm making a choice to put my efforts into something where I can be good at it. And let something that I'm not good at go and accept those, this is a big part of it, and accept those consequences.

And there might be a mission field in that, I think, about the Bible verse about the one lost sheep.

I [00:46:00] mean, truth be told, if you have one person listen to your podcast and it impacts their life, I'm betting you're feeling very good about that. Right.

Right. And so let's just say that I get 50 downloads an episode, which actually puts you, if you have 50 downloads, you're kind of, according to Buzzsprout, I think you were kind of in the top half to top quarter.

Absolutely. Yeah. But that's not big. I mean, it's really not a lot. Imagine if once a week 50 people came in and sat down and listened to me go on about something. And they're not forced to do it like my students are. Your

students are sort of trapped in that. Yeah, that's right. They're paying tuition so they want to get their money's worth.

That's right. There,

you know, people are doing that voluntarily and out of the universe of podcasts and YouTube channels and books and blogs and all the other things they could be spending their time on, [00:47:00] they're going to listen to me. And let's say that 10 percent of those people get something, get something out of that episode.

That means every week or every other week, depending upon my frequency. I make a difference in five people's lives and I think that's what you're, what you're saying with the one little sheep, it's, that's pretty

huge. That's massive. Yeah. You know, and I think we all need to focus on that. You know, I try to start my days off by being thankful and you know, and I think it goes along the lines of what you're saying.

So you're thankful of one person or five people or 10 people actually take the time to reflect and listen to your podcast. And I think that's, I don't think that's measurable. That's, that's, that's something you market to. That is the truth about why you're doing it. And that's why it works.

Right. And it ties into one of the maxims that have, that's really made a tremendous difference in my life.

A tremendous difference. And it came out of a horrible movie. [00:48:00] It was one throwaway line in some B movie that I, I cannot tell you anything about the movie except this line.

One character said to another character, you have to see the possibilities, not the limitations. And I thought, holy moly, that is the secret to life is see the possibilities, not the limitations.

So I'm going to focus on the 50 people or the five people, not the, you know, whatever 8 billion minus 50. That aren't listening. And so that gets back to the strengths and the weaknesses. Don't focus on those limitations of your weaknesses. Focus on the possibilities with your strengths. And I think if you can do that, you can live a really, really good life.

Well, you know, I think you nailed it and I'm going to, I'm going to let us bring it to closure with that statement. So, uh, I just want to give you a minute to talk about how people can reach your podcast and you know what the best way for them to tune in and listen to it.

So the best thing to do is to go to livewellandflourish.

com. All the episodes are [00:49:00] there, the whole catalog, um, full transcripts. If you don't want to listen, you can read, uh, it's all there. Livewellandflourish. com. Excellent.

Well, Craig, I appreciate your time today. I think we've, uh, we've, we've tackled the universe and we've made some, uh, some beneficial discussions here.

I think that people can learn from if, if not this, the, this simple thing about look for possibilities, you know, and don't look at your limitations. So I want to thank you again for joining us and, um, I encourage everyone to go listen to Craig's podcast. And again, thanks for being on the show. All right.

Thanks for having me. It was enlightening and enjoyable.

Very good.

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