Hello, thank you for joining. I'm Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET Inosh, and I'm pleased to welcome you to the Nombase Podcast. Don't forget to check out nombase.com, BevNET's platform built for the CPG community.
It's where you can find episodes of this podcast, our new CPG education learning platform, and so much more.
On LinkedIn and many entrepreneurial circles, the conversation is dominated by the hustle, growth hacks, milestones, dedication to the rising grind, and every possible tip on the mechanics of building a business.
And while those mechanics matter, they're only part of the story.
What often gets overlooked is the personal side, the mindset, the confidence, the boundaries, and the emotional resilience it takes to lead a team or grow a brand, the part that determines whether you can sustain what you're doing and stay aligned
with what truly matters. And so today, we are talking about the human side of the hustle with the perfect pair of CPG leaders. Joining me today are Karen Goldscher and Dan Stangler.
Karen is the founder of Karen Goldscher Coaching and brings deep experience from Annies, Chobani, and Ben and Jerrys. Dan is the president and CEO of Kite Hill and has led teams at Brew Dr.
and General Mills through some of the most demanding transformations in CPG. Together, they bring a grounded and honest look at what it takes to build, lead, and stay human along the way. Dan and Karen, thank you so much for joining.
I think we've all had so much fun planning this conversation, and I just thank you both so much for joining me in this.
Thank you for having us.
Yeah, thank you.
Well, let's start off with getting to know you both a little bit. Karen, let's start with you. You really have had such amazing CPG experience.
How did that lead you to form your coaching practice?
Yeah. My background is primarily in CPG, not intentionally, but primarily organic dairy brands in the network space.
I spent a lot of time putting on that hat of I'm a CPG marketer and taking it off again, and trying to figure out if that was where I saw myself in the future, and had actually an extraordinary executive coach while I was at my time at Annie's, while
with Dan. During that time, I started to peel back the layers of what it was that I wanted to build in, and I realized it was really the people that I was most excited about in my current role.
It was becoming less and less so marketing and more so how can I develop and support these people and figure out what lights them up and where they want to go in their careers.
So through that work of having an executive coach, I realized I think I actually want her job.
So I took some time off having some little ones and then took the leap outside of CPG and never looked back, and I've really enjoyed working with CPG leaders and executives in the space.
Well, I was introduced to you through a friend who's in CPG, who is working with you and she just had such amazing things to say about you and shared some of the exercises that you worked through with her, and I think our audience is going to get so
much out of this conversation. Dan, thank you so much for joining. It seems like your sweet spot in joining a brand is when there's a huge transformation about to take place, maybe in the middle of it.
Can you tell us a little bit about where you tend to join brands and the kinds of activities you oversee?
I tend to join brands that need help with scaling, which is such a simple thing to say.
But I think there's so many different phases and stages that a business goes through as it looks to share whatever the good or service is with its fans, in the case of CPG, with consumers and with the world.
And I have been fortunate to have the experiences and training of a global leader like General Mills, so that I've been able to see things in a lot of different stages and phases, so that I can help things get to the next level.
And that's something that I've just found I've got a passion for and expertise for. But I will admit that that's different than starting things up, which frankly I think is where so much of the inspiration lies in CPG.
And I think one of the things that has made me successful is because I just have such an appreciation for what it takes to take an idea and bring it to life and start it up.
And so that's really how I show up is in with this strong desire to be helpful and to help people take a thing that they have created and get it to the next level and frankly do that while keeping the soul and the things that are important that
Well, certainly in order to help brand scale, getting the human side of it is so important, not only for yourself, but also for the team members because they really are what drive the business forward to that next level.
So, we're super excited to hear about what you've learned on your journey and really get into it.
And you know, the great thing about this topic is whether you are a brand of one and you're a founder who's just starting out or if you're someone who's in Dan's shoes and you're a CEO and president and you're trying to take a business to the next
level, these are all principles that apply and will apply. So, it really is information that hopefully will be helpful to everyone.
6:30
I wanted to start off with a topic that we discussed as being really integral to the human experience here, which is building confidence.
And you know, I think that's something that we can say, but to really pick it apart a little and fully understand what that means.
Karen, can you tell us how you define confidence in a role and how does clarity around your strengths and your weaknesses shape that?
Yeah. You know, a lot of people come to me looking for confidence. They come looking for confidence and clarity.
Those are like the top two requests people want to buy into. And I think founders, especially entrepreneurs, consultants, people often confuse confidence with certainty, right? And their work happens in uncertainty.
You're building something that hasn't been built yet. And so, real confidence, I think, comes from the intersection of, first of all, just having faith in whatever it is that you're building, but knowing your strengths, right?
Knowing where you're really strong. Knowing what's most important to you about what you're building. So, said differently, your values and your mission.
So, if you kind of draw a triangle of, you know, strengths to values to mission, I think it's somewhere in between because it's really kind of having faith that you have the tools, right, within you or you're going to outsource for those things.
You have, you know, the right things in place that you want to build and you know what you're building towards.
You know, a lot of the people that I work with don't have a clear sense of where they're strong because it's often seen as, I guess I should say, it's not seen, right? Our strengths are often not seen because they come naturally to us.
And so part of my job is to just shine a light on those things that people don't realize our strengths because they come easily to them.
So someone will come in and they're like, you know, focused entirely on the blind spots or where they've been kind of increasingly given feedback throughout their career.
And it's my job to shine light on, well, what's been easy about the work that you've done and where have you consistently gotten feedback or been given opportunities to do the same thing over and over again.
So tools that we use will be like Clifton Strengths Assessment or a Peer Feedback Review where we're essentially triangulating what you know about yourself and where you're strong, but also what are other people seeing you exercise in the world and
Your peer feedback survey is so smart.
Would you be up for explaining the kinds of questions that you have your clients ask of the people around them?
Of course. Yeah, I love the Peer Feedback Review because you can kind of see, I do that live with clients. So we kind of read through, hey, here are what all of your colleagues or your mentors, your even dear friends have said about you.
And it's pretty straightforward. It's what do you see my strengths to be? And how have you seen those exercised in the world, so in work or in my personal life?
And what's my superpower? And so we kind of read through those and you so often, almost always see these very clear themes, right?
And the beautiful part about layering that with Clifton is, you've answered all these questions about yourself and you've had this really sophisticated assessment kind of pulled together, these top 34 strengths, and then you kind of draw these direct
lines to all these people replaying those back to you. So it's such a confidence builder and it's one of my favorite things to do with clients.
And can you explain how having confidence almost as a life preserver can help folks, whether they're an entrepreneur of one or they're leading a team of 200 through some of these really difficult and chaotic transitions?
So confidence is a life preserver. I would say you need confidence and you need vulnerability, right? Because you can't really, I guess you can't really have confidence without vulnerability.
And the two are somewhat equal, right? Like the more honest you are about where you're strong, the more honest you can be about where you're not.
And the more you can rely on other people and kind of create that, you know, that the teamwork and the cohesion that you need to kind of support on all corners.
I think confidence is necessary in the moment to say, what am I going to do today and how am I going to do it?
But it's also just a long-term game, especially for founders who have to kind of, again, live in that world of uncertainty of, I'm building this thing. I think I can see it happening.
But you have to have that confidence in yourself to say, you know, I can get up over and over again and continue to build because it's not going to happen overnight, right? So I guess it's a life jacket in that way.
Dan, with all of the experience that you've had, is this something that you struggle with at all or still have to work on?
Or because of the vast experience you've had, are you sort of at a point where you know your strengths, you know how to be vulnerable with your team, and that piece of it for you is somewhat solved in a way?
It is not at all solved. It is not solved at all. I'm working on it every day.
I'm working on it for myself. And then, you know, I consider myself both fortunate but humble in my role to be in a position to be helping others on their own journey. And I, you know, I really like what Karen shared.
I think, you know, I think a big part of confidence is knowing that you're making a difference. And I think the key to being able to make that, that difference is that clarity that we've talked about. And then clear prioritization and preparation.
I think those things certainly help. And then it's just this ongoing journey of learning and self-awareness that I think really makes the difference.
But I think that, you know, among so many things that require us to wake up curious every day, seeking that greater awareness of ourselves and others is really key to this whole confidence thing.
When you talk about clarity, can you expand on what you mean by that?
Yeah, expectations and goals for ourselves and for others, which can sound so simple.
But I think, you know, with businesses, for example, when it really comes down to it, whether you are starting up or you are scaling or, you know, you're a large, you know, multi-billion dollar multinational, business needs to be clear about what
everybody is showing up to do. And it's simply sales have got to go up, costs have got to go down, and cash has got to come in.
And if you can match execution on those fundamentals with connecting with people, working with people, leaving the world a little bit better through whatever it is the business is doing, I think that's where the energy comes from that really
And can you explain the difference between confidence and maybe the arrogance that sometimes leads you not to accept feedback and maybe not be open to other ideas and to sort of be going your own way, whether folks are with you or not?
I would define confidence versus arrogance as belief in oneself matched with that self-awareness that I mentioned, which means that the gap between perception and reality is intentionally shrunk.
I think when you have arrogance, it's where you've got a real gap in perception and reality. And I think confidence is where you get that gap to be closed.
And the only way that you can do that is through listening, connecting with others, and being vulnerable.
Karen, Dan has mentioned vulnerability a couple of times.
15:05
And with all of the clients that you have and with the folks that you work with, I'm sure that's something that comes up often. What do you communicate with your clients about vulnerability? Why it's important?
And how do you do it in a way that supports your business and makes sense in the context of a professional environment?
I think vulnerability has gotten such a bad rap. Thank God for Brené Brown, right? She's made it cool again.
I think it's practical, right? It's the willingness to say, I need help. This is hard or I don't have the answer yet.
And that just builds and attracts trust. I think that the more that you can say, I can't do this. This is hard.
I need help. The more you give other people power and opportunity too, right?
And obviously whether you're in an organization like a Kite Hill or you're a founder kind of, you know, bootstrapping it at the beginning, you know, there's low resource seasons regardless of where you are.
And the more you can allow yourself to kind of have that opportunity and create that space for other people, I think just the more permission you give, you know, you just give everybody the permission to kind of live in that space.
I think Brene Brown, I'm going to botch this, but she has a quote that essentially says, vulnerability sounds like truth and it feels like courage. And truth and courage are never comfortable.
They're always uncomfortable, but they're always seen as strength. They're never seen as weaknesses. And so just to kind of live and die by that saying, I think is, you know, the best thing you can do for your people.
Dan, can you give us an example of a time you were vulnerable with your team and how that helped the team and your goals overall?
You know, I'll go back to my time at Annie's.
It began in late 2014 when Annie's and General Mills got together. And I was so excited for the opportunity to join the team out in Berkeley.
You know, and I will admit, I got off on the kind of on the wrong foot with all of the good intentions and everything that comes along with that.
Because of my excitement to be a part of such an incredible brand and an incredible team of people and wanting to, you know, jump in and contribute and make a difference. And, you know, in many ways, prove that I was worthy of the opportunity.
And all of those things probably sound okay, but I think that, you know, the challenge for me and the challenge when you approach things, that way, is that you can be a little bit overbearing and a little bit overwhelming.
And the risk of that is that you're not listening enough and you're not connecting enough.
And so I was fortunate that the team at Annie's was willing to give me some feedback about, hey, we can, you know, we can see the energy and the excitement and the expertise that you bring. But you got to change the approach.
And you got to be willing to, you know, create space to build these relationships, create space to listen. And you need to be aware of that, you know, of that energy, positive as it is intended.
It's not landing the way that, you know, you would really want it to. And frankly, that gift made all of the difference. And Karen was a part of that.
And that led to, you know, just an absolutely incredible four years getting to be a part of that special, special brand and team. You know, and I think in a really important scaling chapter in the business's life cycle.
Karen, if a leader isn't lucky enough to have a team like you did at Annie's that you were a part of and that feels comfortable sharing feedback like that with a leader to help them grow and be the right leader for the business, how, what are some
Yeah.
Well, first of all, I want to just respond to Dan too, because having been a part of that and Dan, you would describe yourself as earnest. I think that excitement and earnestness was so welcomed, right?
And you did such a beautiful job of taking any feedback you received and just being such an amazing leader at ANNA's and you just were the right person to see us through a transition like that.
I think you said being pretty earnest.
No, perfectly earnest. You heard that wrong. No, I think everyone has a hard time hearing tough feedback.
At General Mills, we called it productive discourse, and we were scored on our productive discourse in our annual reviews and just something that's incredibly difficult for everyone, even if you're strong and it's still hard, if you have an ounce of
empathy in your body. What I think we often do is we treat it like it's our identity. I was told I was a bad communicator, I'm a bad communicator versus data.
I think the more we can use it as data of, hey, I was given this feedback, that's an opportunity for me to grow and just not say, I'm never going to be good at this or this is always going to be a struggle for me.
What I ask people to test, everything that we do in coaching is a test. It's an experiment. You're in a lab with a lab coat on and you are just seeing what sticks.
I ask them, hey, this week, let's try some feedback loop. Let's put some feelers out to the team, to your mentors, to whomever you're working with and ask them what's working, what's not working. How is this week better than last week?
How is this week worse than last week? What do you need more of from me? What do you need less of from me?
Just trying to kind of create a feedback loop so that you can get more clarity and create more structure and just strengthen your leadership maybe in ways that are more difficult when you're getting that feedback annually.
And you're expected to kind of run with it. So just kind of creating an ongoing discussion around feedback I think just kind of lowers the bar and makes it feel a little bit less personal.
Can you give some examples of how folks can use that kind of feedback to implement business processes that actually make sense?
So it's not just an assault on your strengths and weaknesses, but it really can function as a roadmap to help you understand who you should hire to offset maybe the thing that you're not doing well, or what step to take next.
How can founders and leaders use that feedback to figure out where to go next in their businesses?
Yeah. I mean, I love the way you just phrased that because I do think that feedback can tell you where you need to hire, right? If you're getting feedback consistently, that something is maybe not so great, or there's opportunities for improvement.
To you, you could say, hey, that's something I'm really excited to work on. Maybe you take that in and you think, okay, next week, I'm going to crash that thing.
But maybe you think, God, I dread this, or I'm constantly avoiding this thing that I'm consistently getting feedback on time and time again. I think that's a real indicator of, hey, maybe I should hire somebody for this thing.
Obviously, you can't outsource communication. We can't outsource key skills or certain parts of being a founder. But you can outsource and build a team where you have blind spots.
I think that just having those conversations consistently, again, builds that trust with your team, but allows you to make business decisions about what kinds of people you're bringing in, allows you to understand how to interview those people, and
just create more of an honest feedback loop so that you're relying on other people, not just yourself, to be strong because you can't be strong in all places. And I think just being able to build a team where maybe you otherwise can't do something is
Dan, I saw you nodding over there.
Can you talk about how you've used feedback in some of your past roles to implement some part of business that maybe wasn't happening before?
So whether that's a new hire, whether it's doing things differently, taking a look at how things are working because a team member or some team members pointed out that they didn't think it was working. How has that played out in your career?
Time and time again is the short answer.
And I think the really encouraging thing, especially I'll say in 2025 with all of this innovation and technology around AI and so on and so forth, is that I have never been more bullish or confident on the power of people.
And so even to Karen's point, when you ask the question about feedback, at this point, I'm relying on it for everything that I do, whether it's formal or informal.
And so I think no matter where you are in your life or your business, no matter what the scale or if you're just starting up, whether people are officially or directly a part of an organization or just a trusted group of people that you have around
you, it's never been more important to lean in to people that know you and care enough to tell you the truth, right? So Karen talked about truth and about courage. And I think that's the key, right?
Like anything that you're doing going forward is going to be better if it's informed by others, by other people that care.
So I think that's the number one thing that I would encourage to anyone at this point, is make sure you've got people around you, that you can ask questions, you can get feedback from and it goes both ways and whatever you need to do, a new hire, a
new process, a new product line, a new priority. It's going to be better if you're working with others.
I have to say, I love the way you just connected feedback and caring because I think people so often feel like I'm going to hurt this person's feelings or I don't care about this person or whatever it is.
Like if I give them constructive criticism or productive discourse, however we want to call it, then that's going to hurt them. Instead, what you're saying is actually, if you care about someone, you will give them feedback.
Having those people in your corner that are courageous enough and truthful enough to give you feedback, that's the greatest gift of all.
It's almost like being that friend to tell someone, you have something in your teeth because you don't want them to walk around with it for the rest of the day.
If you truly care about someone, you want them to be the best version of themselves, and you'll deliver it in a more caring way than someone who doesn't care about them as much.
27:13
Karen, you and I were joking before we hopped on about how you look on LinkedIn, and sometimes it's just easy to get overwhelmed. It's really the rising grind, hike in a mountain, it's sunrise, then cold plunging, and then you start your day.
There really is a lot of that on LinkedIn and just in general. Although on the one hand, it's great to see that energy out there, sometimes it can feel a little bit overwhelming.
Burnout is a real possibility in this industry, especially for folks who are in high growth positions, high growth brands.
There's just so much to do, and especially as a brand is scaling, I feel like folks find themselves with their hands in every bucket at some point, and there's just a lot going on, and it can be hard to manage.
How do you help your clients understand when to push harder? When do you do the second cold plunge, or when do you step back? What does spending your energy wisely look like in practice?
Because it's easy to think that everything that you're doing has to be done the way that you're doing it.
First of all, I give clients homework after every session. It'll never be cold plunging or eating 10 eggs. I might have you post on LinkedIn, but it's not like the beast mode stuff that's happening now.
Noah, this is such an important topic and I feel so strongly about it because I think that we all show up a certain way, whether it comes to social media or just presenting when we come into our organization.
We want to show up a certain way and that can be exhausting. And I think Dan said on our first call something to the degree of the more human you are, the more confident you are, right? The more you can be yourself, the more confident you are.
And we all respect the person that is just owning it versus the person that you're like, what's really going on there? Right? So as far as with my clients, I try to really create a safe space to understand, like, what do they care most about?
Right? Like, truly, what are their values? Not what are you shopping on a list of values that look good and, you know, you want to post on your LinkedIn.
But at the core of it, what are the things that are integral to you to help you feel fulfilled in your life? Because those are the things that we push for, right?
Like the things that are related to status or, you know, how we're perceived, those things matter less. So hopefully, so, you know, when working with people, it's about their energy, it's about clarity, it's about alignment.
If one of those is low, maybe you need to push gently. If two of those are low, maybe you need to pause. And if three of those are low, I think like a full reset is needed for someone.
And, you know, just asking them, like, if you keep pushing in a month, what's it going to look like? If you stop and you pause and you just take this moment to kind of recalibrate in a month, what's it going to look like?
And is the benefit of the pause greater than the risk of pushing? You know, I think that can tell you a lot.
Because when someone does decide to take that pause, how does that break, help them start fresh?
Yeah, I think, again, it does come back to values a bit. And just knowing yourself, like, what does your oxygen mask look like? You know, for some people, you know, we've talked a lot about preventing burnout in terms of daily habits.
It really is so simple, right? And at the core, sometimes I'll talk to founders and I'm like, tell me about your week, tell me about your day, right?
And they're like, well, I wake up and the first thing I do is I look at my phone and it's like, whoa, if you had a glass of water, you know, have you smelled fresh air? And so just like, really the basics, I think people need to come back to.
And I know it sounds ridiculous or, you know, like such generic advice, but it really comes back to like, what do you need for your nervous system? Right?
Because you can't feel inspired and creative and energized and have consistent, you know, marathon level momentum if you are, you know, just going, going, going all the time and not giving yourself the things that you need.
So I think it just allows people to kind of come back to that level place.
It occurs to me that being able to identify your strengths and weaknesses, like we were talking about earlier, really helps with that because that helps you understand what's important to you and what you should be focusing on.
Yeah, the more you use your strengths, the more energy you get, right?
Dan, you made a comment about knowing yourself and to really know yourself and knows those things about yourself are so important.
And I think sometimes we take them for granted, but to really understand yourself helps you understand what you should do next. Dan, I'm just curious about how you operate.
What are some of your strengths and weaknesses and how do those shape how you do business, the kinds of people that you put around you, the kinds of pauses you take in order to run a successful business?
I think strengths are people, passion, and competitiveness. I'm an extrovert. I get a lot of energy from working with people.
And I believe in energy and I believe in momentum and I want to win. So it's been said there's nothing better than raising trophies with your friends. I believe that in everything that I do.
I think, you know, things, wins are better, feel better when you do them with other people. Now, you know, in terms of, you know, how I, you know, manage that, it's, again, it's not perfect.
So I think that there's an element of people giving themselves some grace and some patience in anything that they do and on any given day.
I think that it's important to note that some of these things that maybe used to get referred to as self care, they really are about leadership and performance management. You can't lead and you cannot perform if you don't have sleep.
You can't lead and you can't perform if you haven't had nourishing foods. Same thing if you haven't had some physical activity, to Karen's point, some fresh air, some time outdoors. So I think those basics need to get prioritized on a daily basis.
But I don't think that it has to be at an admirable extreme, so to speak.
But when you start thinking about it less as self care and more about how to show up best in your role and with your team, it takes on a different level of prioritization in your life. And you get those simple things going.
Sleep, exercise, nourishing foods, time to recharge out of work with the other people in your life that you care about. I think that creates the momentum for people to be successful and confident and so on and so forth.
And not only is it important to understand your own level of burnout and how to take care of yourself, but also how to take care of your team and understand when it's time to either keep pushing at the high intensity that you are to push harder or
whether this person really does need to take a break and they do need a minute to collect themselves so they can get back at it. Dan, how do you understand from your team members who can keep pushing hard, who needs to push harder, and then who are
It's a great question that I have found there's no magic answer to.
It's just about connecting with people and caring enough to know what's really going on. I also think that, you know, a lot of jobs and, you know, in people's careers, they require hard work. There's nothing wrong with hard work.
I think what happens is people get burned out when they're working hard on the wrong things or things that don't make a difference.
And that's the key, you know, working to find yourself as an individual in a place where you're working on interesting things and making a difference. And, you know, as a leader, figuring out what really matters.
When you do that, I think hard work is energizing. I think most people would agree with that.
Not easy to do, but I think that's the practice, you know, day in and day out, that any individual needs to be pushing for in partnership with, you know, the people that they are around.
Karen, how have you helped your clients figure out which part of their work is meaningful and really energizes them versus the parts that maybe they need to get some help with, whether it's assigned to somebody else or take someone on with, or maybe
even cut it out altogether? How do you help people understand that?
I do think, to Dan's point, it starts with just caring about people, right? And having those honest conversations, I think job descriptions have responsibilities listed. And then nine out of 10 times, you come into a role and that morphs, right?
You Frankenstein it to that person, hopefully, if there are good leaders in your organization or however you want to think about it. But I do think that understanding somebody's long-term goals is really important, right?
Because to your point, Dan, there's nothing wrong with hard work. And frankly, what I'm hearing from everyone that I'm speaking with right now is like, whoa, it's a grind right now.
And I really do need those basics, those kind of fundamentals, because it's a lot of work and it's a lot of hard work right now.
So I think that understanding, whether it's for yourself as a founder or for your teammate, your direct report, what is the long-term goal for this person? And that might change 10 times over. But what are they building towards?
So that's kind of what I refer to as that mission. Whether it's your mission with your life or kind of the purpose of your life or whether it's kind of the mission of what you're building in your career.
And if we can be tethered to something that feels like I'm laying the breadcrumbs for something that's going to pay dividends over time versus, this kind of sucks, I'm doing this right now and I don't like it.
And I don't see any future where I want to grow in this. Looking at those two things side by side is so important.
Because if you can say I have this amazing brand marketer, for example, and they're doing all the syndicated data for our organization and they are just really hating it.
But they aspire to be the marketing director and they need to be able to peel apart all that data. We want to kind of consistently look at what are they growing towards and do I need to continue to push them towards this thing.
So I do think that it's both the responsibility of that person to understand that and it's also hopefully the responsibility of the mentor or manager of that person to kind of keep the long-term goal in mind so that they can abandon or move to
And not only do you need help and support figuring out some of those things that you may not be naturally suited to like figuring out all of the data but just having somebody help you understand an overall picture of what's going on because so often
it's easy to get lost in a situation and not be able to see the forest for the trees when you're in the middle of it. it's easy to get lost in a situation and not be able to see the forest for the trees when you're in the middle of it.
39:20
Which is we talked a little bit too about mentorship. Dan, I love to hear from you. What does your mentorship circle look like?
Do you still have mentors that you look to for advice, and then do you provide that for other people in your ecosystem?
I count on it. It gets back to the earlier point that I made about working intentionally to not really move forward with anything without connecting with people.
I am fortunate to have a combination of personal and professional people in my life that provide perspective for me, that I can reach out to with the text at any moment and get their time and their care on things.
Simply put, I try and model that same behavior with a number of folks that I have worked with over the years.
Again, I think when I say that there's sort of no magic to it, it's meant to be encouraging to people that it's just a matter of hearing these practices and putting them to work. And there's, it's not binary. It doesn't have to be perfect.
It's just getting it started and then recognizing the progress that you're making. So if something I'm saying or that Karen's saying isn't happening, that's okay.
But you can get started today because what we're talking about is just simple things that should be really actionable that can make a huge difference.
You're right. I mean, they sound like basics. They sound like simple things.
But if you're not prioritizing them and you're not making sure that you have them in place, it really is just so easy to get lost in the bustle of growing a business. Karen, you had some great ideas around this.
What does it look like to recognize and prioritize the basics? What are those? I know we talked about sleep movement.
Can you talk about some of the core things that you help people understand are really important? How do you help them understand how to work those into their day without them competing with, what can oftentimes be a high volume of work?
Everybody is so different, right? So boundaries are really important. Again, something that's been so overused, but I think confusing too because boundaries are decisions that you make in advance, decisions that you make to protect your time.
I think that there is also just this feeling of as a founder, I need to be a superhero or as a CEO, I need to be a superhero. I should be able to do it all and muscle through and da-da-da-da.
But every person is so different, their needs look different and so I work with clients on doing simple things like energy audits. Tell me when you had the most energy this week, what were you working on? Who were you working on it with?
How did you show up? Did you ask that person how you made them feel when you were kind of in that vibe or flow or whatever it was for you? And on the flip side, like what was so draining?
What were you like just exhausted to get through? What was awful this week? And what did that feel like for you?
And if that needs to stay in your life as part of your job, what can you do either before or after that thing to make it a little bit lighter? Because that dread and avoidance can make things feel really heavy.
But yeah, at its core, I think you do need the foundational things like the sleep and the food and all those components. But I just think everyone's really different.
And so whether it is through mentorship and through coaching, through a therapist, through anybody that you can use as a sounding board to hold yourself accountable and honest, having those discussions around your needs and how to build those into
your life, whether it's discussions around values and boundaries, I think it just needs to be non-negotiable. And people need to remember to that, even if it's a boundary that you're holding around, I can't reply to email at 5 p.m.
Because that's the time I spend with my little ones. That boundary actually allows you to be more generous over time.
And so if you can kind of flip the script on, that means I can give less to my business and look at it instead as I can give more because I'm serving myself and those foundational needs.
I think that can help people kind of give back a little bit more to themselves. That's a big one for, you know, I work with a lot of consultants and founders who have little kids. And, you know, Dan's got two times the number of kids that I have.
And I, you know, my husband and I draw firm boundaries. Like the 5 to 8 p.m. window is sacred.
And then you come back and you're a better person because you've connected with your family. That's another kind of foundational component, right?
That's such a great example of a boundary and, you know, a personal ritual or a routine that helps you stay grounded.
Do you have any other examples of boundaries or things that you do across your day or across your week that help you stay focused in a healthy way?
Yeah, I love this conversation. Yeah, one of my favorite books is Atomic Habits. And everybody and their mother has read it, right?
And it's like a mandatory reading when someone works with me. Just because I think it's important to think about how our brain builds habits and how our motivations allow us to maintain habits, right? And how our self-talk allows us to maintain them.
And so at a very high level, certain things like, I actually think General Mills, I started doing this, like the walking meetings, right?
Like just saying, hey, you know, if we have this one on one every week, you know, whether it's with your direct reports or whomever, this meeting is going to be a walking meeting. We're both going to commit to going outside and walking.
Some people would be on their treadmills in our office in Berkeley. But just, you know, committing to habit stacking or things that give you back those things that you need, like, we're going to connect over a lunch meeting.
You know, we're going to find the time to connect and actually sit outside of our desks and eat food.
I think it, you know, again, it just kind of has to go back to, how am I making sure that I am ticking off all the values, the things that I've said and declared are most important to me and the things that give me energy.
Dan, how about you? What are some of the personal routines, some of the boundaries that you have in place that help you stay focused in a way that isn't burning you out?
Well, I will say, Karen mentioned, I've got four active kids, and they all played a lot of sports throughout their lives. A couple of them are in college now.
But that was always a priority to me, to be able to be a part of their events and watch them play and do the things that they loved.
But I think more than this specific example is what Karen and I have both observed and are talking about is sharing with others, whatever you need and whatever your truth is. That's how you build understanding and relationships and trust.
And so whether it's that five to eight window or it's, I've got sporting events on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I think the starting point is to just share that.
And then when you don't have those things, whatever they happen to be for any individual that are important, then it's also being dependable and showing up and demonstrating that people can count on you and then you find that rhythm.
And that sharing. And I think it makes it easier to prioritize and protect some of the personal things that people have in their lives, then it might seem at the outset. I just think this is such an important conversation for people to be having.
And, you know, I... As we mentioned, we're all a work in process.
I think if there's anything that I hope people take away, it's that, you know, no matter where somebody's at on their journey, no matter what their role might, you know, happen to be in life, leaning into people and being willing to share and
communicate and making a habit of those things really makes a huge difference. And it sounds easy, and I think in some ways it is, as long as you do the intentional work of actually taking the action.
We used to talk about work-life balance, and just like boundaries, everybody's poo-pooed that, understandably. And I think it's become more discussion around work-life integration.
And I think both Dan and I are really lucky to do work that we feel really passionately about, and really love, and feel motivated by. So when you go to work, it doesn't feel as much like, I'm muscling through this and I can't wait until 5 PM, right?
But I think we need more work-life integration, and the more you can, to Dan's point, connect with people, and have people who care about you at work, and be able to show up and talk about your four kids, and the soccer practice, and the thing.
The more you can get energy from the experience of the work that you're doing. I think that the more we're drawing a line of like, hey, this is work, Karen, and this is home, Karen, it's like that's exhausting.
That increases, I think, burnout, and just makes people feel like, I don't know, they're less motivated to stay and do that work over time.
So that's the only other thing that kind of feels topical right now is, you know, as people are working really hard and long hours, it feels like we need more integration into our personal lives. So it's not as much of a slog.
Always in business, a lot of emphasis put on achievement. And I think that it's important to be clear about that and then celebrate those wins. I think equally important is the need to recognize progress and put perspective on progress.
I think that that can help, you know, when you're in the middle of the grind, either giving yourself that grace to see it yourself or sharing that with another person, no matter what your role can do a lot to keep people moving, motivated, energized.
Karen Goldscher of Karen Goldscher Coaching and Dan Stangler of Kite Hill, thank you so much for bringing your wealth of experience and vulnerability around a topic that folks don't necessarily always talk about and pull the curtain back on.
But I am so grateful that both of you did today. So thank you so much for joining me in conversation, for everybody else listening and watching out there. Thank you for tuning in to the Nombase Podcast and we'll see you next time.
That concludes another episode of the Nombase Podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a review and follow us on your listening platform of choice.
You can also watch and listen to past episodes on nombase.com and don't forget to join our Nombase Slack at slack.bevnet.com for company updates, industry networking and community discussions. See you next time.
