Family Business Series: Why Success in Business Depends on Success at Home

Jamie (00:02):

This is the water table.

Speaker 2 (00:05):

The chance to hear the agricultural side of these issues.

Jamie (00:09):

Place for people to go find information and education.

Speaker 3 (00:13):

Water management is just going to become even more critical into the future.

Jamie (00:19):

How misunderstood what we do is.

Speaker 2 (00:22):

I would encourage people to open their minds and listen to this dialogue.

Jamie Duininck(00:32):
Welcome back to The Water Table podcast. Today Joining me is Cory Carlson

Talk about… Because I think this is where there certainly are coaches like this, but probably not as many in the mainstream that do help you in your whole life or want to be a coach in your whole life. So talk about that a little bit. You’ve kind of mentioned a little bit in your intro, but winning at home and making sure that all aspects of your life are hitting on all cylinders to be the best you can be. How do you go about that in a coaching situation? You know, when you start, you maybe don’t know the client that well, and there’s some things that I’m sure you feel like as, before you ask him, “Okay, here we go. I’m going to ask this question and going to either have the guy get up and walk out or slap me or whatever it might be.” I don’t know, but it’s got to feel a little bit vulnerable when you start to get into more personal conversations, at least at first.

Cory Carlson (01:44):
For sure at first. And you know, I’m human just like everyone else and I don’t want to make people mad or I don’t… Sometimes I struggle with approval of others, myself. And so I want that client on the other end of the zoom call to, like me and all… think I’m the best coach ever, all those things. So I still struggle with all that for sure. So yeah, I mean it’s a great question, Jamie

For me, I am a business coach where we talk a lot of times on leadership and delegation and time management. So we’re doing all this, but what I love and so grateful for what I get to do is because I have came out of the gate saying, we’re talking home, we’re talking life. Like it’s all on the table.

And even though we may spend… Not may. Even though we do spend the majority of our time talking about business, it’s that ability to hop into the things that are actually really weighing down that leader. And it could be the fact that they’re beating themselves up, because they have not been to the gym or, they just feel like they’re always hurried and kind of scurrying along and not doing quiet time or journaling or distant with their spouse. Or a lot of leaders don’t have friends and that gets… That’ll get brought up at some point. I can relate to that. There’s a time in my life where I was trying to be super employee, super husband and on the weekends and super dad on the weekends and what that left was is I had no friends.

And so it took my coach to kind of challenge me and call me out on that. And I’m so grateful he did and probably about seven years ago, that changed my life. And before we hit recording… One of those is happening this week where I about seven years ago joined a Bible study and now this week we’re going on our annual trip together. So I’m grateful for that, but it took a coach to kind of shed the light on an area to my life that was a gap in what I needed to be that better version of myself.

Jamie Duininck (03:53):
I always just chalk that up to no one wanted to be my friend, but…

Cory Carlson (03:57):
Yeah, that’s right.

No so I mean… So that’s it is just by talking with people and when someone starts working with me, they know that it’s… We’re going to talk about all areas of life. And I think for you, if anyone who hires a coach is… I encourage you to find that coach that wants to talk about all areas of your life, because you can’t just talk about business. Because if you get in a fight at 7:00 AM with your spouse, it is going to affect your business meeting at 9:00 AM. Absolutely. You can’t concentrate if you’re always thinking about something else outside of that board room or outside of that meeting, same thing. I always think of the end of the day, you know kind of about three o’clock, some individuals on… In your company or on your team, aren’t really focused on a meeting because they’re thinking about that conversation or that reentry into their home that they’ve got with their spouse or their teenage kid. That’s a disruption to whatever it could be.

Jamie Duininck (04:54):
Yeah. It’s funny that just, little bit off subject, but it just came into my mind when you said that about something going on at work and then you’re transitioning back to home in the evening. Several years ago, I mean maybe 15 years ago, but a long time ago I used to, once in a while, once a month or more I’d be coming home. And I would see my wife pulled over on the side of the road, like two blocks from home. And I would get home and… I don’t even think, I can’t remember exactly, but I didn’t ask her right away, but it always bugged me, because I’m we’re getting home, kids are getting off the bus, all that, or they’re just getting home. It’s kind of chaos, all that.

And well finally when we had a conversation about it and I’ll never forget this, she just said, “I want to finish my day before I pull in the driveway. When I pull in the driveway, I want to be all there. You know, I don’t… If I’m on the phone, I don’t want to be on the phone when I walk in the door. So if I’m on the phone, I want to pull over, finish my conversation.” And that really, I hadn’t thought about that. That really struck me in a positive way and started trying to do the same thing. So now it’s kind of funny. Our… I think our neighbors wonder what in the world we’re doing, because they’ll see a lot of us pulled over a couple blocks from home often. But that’s what you’re talking about is being present, whether it’s at work or at home. And I think it’s really important and we miss it.

Well, thanks Cory for joining us on The Water Table. Great discussion today. If you’d like to hear, as a listener, to the whole discussion with Cory, you can find it at WaterTable.ag/business.