How To Discover Your Natural Abilities With Kathy Kolbe - I Love Marketing Episode #213

Hello, this is Joe Polish and what you're about to hear is a special bonus episode for I Love Marketing is a interview that I and Dan Sullivan did with Kathy Colby, the founder of Colby.com and you'll understand what that means in just a moment. But we did this for our other podcast which is 10xtalk.com and I thought the content was so useful and so valuable that everyone that listens to I Love Marketing would find it very useful for their businesses and for their enterprises and simply for learning their MO because this will help you become a better marketer if you understand more about not only what your Colby is and what Colby means, but something that you can use as a tool to help you get the right team and the right people to help you with whatever business endeavors you have. So listen to this interview and this episode and please give us your comments on ilovemarketing.com enjoy.

I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish and.

This is the I Love Marketing podcast. Hello, this is Joe Polish and this.

Is Dan Sullivan and welcome to 10X.

Talk in a very special episode of 10X Talk because we've got a real special guest by the name of Kathy Colby who's on the line and I'm going to read kath bio in just a moment. But Kathy, how are you? You're here in Phoenix where I am just in a different location. So how you doing?

I'm doing great.

So here just for people that don't know. A lot of people know Kolbe, spelled with A K K-O L B E. Kolbe.com is the website, but Kathy Kolbe is an acclaimed theorist, bestselling author, entrepreneur, educator, organizational strategist, consultant, speaker, and she's the founder of Colby Corp. And the center for Conative Abilities. She's considered to be the world's leading authority on human instincts and conation and has dedicated her life to helping people to find the freedom to be themselves through understanding and using their conative abilities. Kathy has advised Fortune 500 companies, business executives, government leaders, universities, professional sports teams, nonprofits, management consultants, bestselling authors and job holders to maximize their performance and increase productivity through identifying, understanding and using their cognitive talents. She's a sought after speaker. She's delivered presentations to audiences in 17 nations including Keynoting Management Center, Europe, the Global Leadership Conference and the State of the World Conference, and has discussed her groundbreaking work on over 300 radio and TV programs. She resides in Phoenix, Arizona, is married with five children and only eight grandchildren and Kathy enjoys gardening and Spending time getting conative with her grandchildren, which you're gonna learn what all that means in just a moment. I first found out about Kath, how many people have through the wonderful program at Strategic Coach. And Dan Sullivan Back in 1997, I think was my first introduction to it. And since then, it has really helped me guide a lot of my hiring and how my company is run and my behavior and what I spend my time doing. So, Dan, anything you want to say to Kathy before we start asking her some questions about this stuff?

I think I remember the day that my profile came back. It was 1995. It probably represents the single most important day of my life, of getting very, very simple and clear about what my future is going to be. And it was simply four numbers that came back after I had done the questionnaire that triggers the whole process. It's a very simple process. Takes 15 to 20 minutes to actually answer the questions. But what came back for me was such a clear read of two things. One is everything that I had really loved doing. I was just past 50, I was 51 years old at that time. And the other thing is every area of my life where I had experienced failure and frustration. And it was just like a snapshot, an autopsy, almost an X ray of what my life had been up to there. And it was just so liberating from that point forward that we immediately instituted it as the number one thing that everybody had to do in our company. And it's the number one thing that we get everybody who has ever been a Strategic Coach participant, we get them established and we recommend that every team member that they have all their hiring, putting their teams together, they use Kathy's work and also to have their family members, their friends, everybody they possibly know to do it. And it's just a no brainer for us. Everything starts with Colby.

Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, Kathy, first off, anything that I didn't say about who you are that you would like to, you know, you can hear your bio. But it's one thing to have you describe yourself and then I'd love to have you start this conversation with describing what is Colby? Is it based on personality? Does it tell you what you should do and what you shouldn't be doing, like kind of describe what it is. So let's cover those two things first.

Well, first of all, when I hear my biology kind of missing for me always the heart and soul of why I do what I do. Because those of you who know me well know there are a whole Bunch of things I don't care about at all. It's not as if I'm one of those people who works nine days a week and never stops. I never stop working and thinking about my theory and the things that bring me joy. But I think I'm a person who finds the greatest joy in just having the freedom to be me. And I think I've proven certainly to myself and to people who know me well, that I have that freedom. I'm 75 years old. I'm totally free every single day of my life to be me. I wake up in the morning and I say, oh yeah, another day I get to be me. Why? Because I know who I am. I know what I need to avoid doing. I know how I need to spend my time and energy. And my life is all about finding ways to help other people find that freedom. And it starts with those I love. My family, my kids, my grandkids, my friends. And you two are among those. Every time I hear you guys talk about how you found some freedom to be yourselves through my work, that's my joy. So I think if I could say what I'm not, I'm not the poster child for dyslexia, although I'm a severe dyslexic. I'm not the poster child for ADD adhd, because I now know, although I've always been called that once the term was known, I now know that that's a bogus diagnosis, if it's even used as a diagnosis. It's not reality. My work proves that most of what is called a problem, a learning disability, is actually an advantage because it's housed in the conative, not the affective or cognitive. So when I throw out those terms, I don't do it because I'm a scientist. I do it because I'm a seeker of freedom.

That is good. And I mean, what entrepreneur doesn't want freedom? But how many of them don't have any freedom because they're kind of prisoners of their own self created structure? I mean, not all, but many, right?

Yeah. Too many people try to be what they think others think they should be or who they feel they have to be. And they don't embrace their reality, their truth. So we're all endowed with an equal amount of creative ability, but it comes in different forms. If we're true to ourselves, we have very little stress in our lives.

Well, you know, me and Dan do this podcast for mostly entrepreneurs. I think this episode would be valuable for anyone that just wants to have some greater insight and learn about an incredible tool and resource that you created that could help them. Most of the people that listen to us, they want to grow a company 10 times. They're achievement minded entrepreneurs. And I think this gives such a great opportunity and one of the many things that me and Dan offer people through Genius Network and Strategic Coach and now sharing for people that know about Colby what Colby is. So, Dan, I'd love to have you kind of talk about how you got introduced to this, how you actually use it, and then I want to just have a discussion with you, Kathy, both of us, about how to use it to have more successful and more freedom, because that would be really appealing to a lot of people. It's one thing to make more money and have better clients, but it's another to have a lot more joy in your life and have freedom while also growing successfully financially and relationshiply and all the other ways. So, yeah, if you could speak to that, Dan.

Actually, my mind was, I think, really ready for Kathie's work when we came across it. I was introduced to it by a real big fan of the Colby profile, Terry Stone. You'll remember Terry.

Oh, sure, Kathy.

Yeah. And he was a very interesting person because he came to Strategic Coach for one year, but over the course of about five years before I met you, Joe, he was the biggest referral source for individuals coming into Coach. But he came for one year, and then over about the next 10 years, he sent us about 150 individuals. But he said, you know, the one thing that would really, really support what you're doing in Strategic Coach is the work of Kathy Kolbe. And then we got the introduction. I think, if I'm not mistaken, Kathy, you got interested in us because you had never seen so many 10 quick starts coming through in a batch. He said, you know, it was almost like a tidal flood of a different species arriving on your shores. All of a sudden you just got not just tens, but nines and eights. So, you know, we always have a very high percentage of our entrepreneurs who will have a lawn number in their Quick Start column. But actually, 15 years previously, I had come to a discover and it had to do with a project that I did here in Canada in the year of the disabled and handicapped, which was 1980, this was a United nations year where countries around the world were going to do a thorough investigation of the issues of individuals who have a various kind of handicap or disability. And then what could be done, like curb cuts and accessibility for individuals so that they could be out in the workforce, and they could actually live out there in the world for us. And I was the writer and designer on the project. It was a side project I did, aside from my coaching, for a friend who was elected to the government in Canada. So I spent the better part of about nine months interviewing these individuals, and it represented about 40 different kind of impairments of one kind or another. And these are all physical. Some of them were mental.

And.

And I developed this very, very interesting thought as I was listening to all the stories that these individuals are kind of disabled and handicapped in a particularly visible way that prevents them from being able to participate normally. But I said, you know, I'm disabled, I'm handicapped, and there's all sorts of situations that I get into or I've obligated myself to where I'm just really dysfunctional. And I said, and there are certain areas that I'm just. I'm a star and I'm confident and I have enormous energy. So I had developed a concept, which was called unique ability, that at the center of everybody's activities, there may be about 15 activities that they're doing which other people could do a lot better than they could. And their being involved in those other activities actually prevents them from focusing on the thing where they're really great. And we had developed this concept of unique ability, but I didn't have any way of testing it. I didn't have any way of verifying it and putting it into a structure. So that when Terry Stone talked about what you did, we did it immediately. I mean, we did it as quickly as we could in the pre Internet days. I got back and I said, oh, wow, this is bullseye. We got a bullseye here. So I had already been developing, from our standpoint, a philosophical attitude toward this, just focusing on who you are and what you're really great at. But what you brought was all the research you brought, the technology that made it very, very easy for us in a very short period of time, to acquaint people with the sweet spot was of all their daily activities. And that's really how we got started. And Joe, you're a great, great example and strategic coach because you're very gifted, you're very curious, you're very alert and everything else. And yet an enormous amount of your frustration as an individual comes from really obligating yourself into areas of activity which really, quite frankly, drive you crazy. And when you're doing those activities, you drive other people crazy.

Yes, exactly. I would agree with that fully. So here's what I would like to do, because I also understand that we know what Colby is, but there's many people that be like, well, what are you guys talking about? What is Colby? And like I mentioned earlier, Kathy, is it based on personality? People that don't know say, oh, that's a personality test. So if you could describe what is a Colby, what is this profile? What does it do? Why should someone do it? And anything else that would really allow people to understand what it is we're talking about here.

I would also say what it isn't, because that's where the confusion comes from, is in the areas of what Colby actually isn't.

Well, I like using sports as an example, and my maiden name is Wonderlick. So my dad created the Wonderlic personnel test that's used now by the NFL to select players for football for different positions. And you may have read about it, because every year when they get together and they do the selection process, players take the Wonderlic and start leaking. Information comes out, oh, this guy's smarter than that guy because of their Wonderlic score. Well, as a kid, I used to say, but, dad, just because somebody scores better on the Wonderlic doesn't mean that they're better at doing anything. I don't happen to think because you score well on a Wonderlic, it makes you a better football player. What it does is tells you cognitively, intellectually, how much memory do you have for the kind of knowledge, the kind of information you have to gather? How good are you at evaluating that information? How good are you at perceiving the right and wrong and whether it's correct to do this, whether that's actually what happened in that situation? How much can you provide information that is accurate, whether it's in math or science or history or whatever? So the Wonderlic tells you that, well, how many players on the football team need to provide information and have great memories for every single thing that happens? Well, they need to have a good memory for the play. So they need first. Lowest level on the cognitive is simply memorizing. And yeah, they need the lowest level on the cognitive, but they don't need to be intellectual geniuses where they can do mathematical formulas or scientific investigations. That's not the kind of information that's relevant. So I used to argue with dad that I didn't see it as being relatively were important to sports or a lot of other things. The arts, a lot of entrepreneurialism, a whole lot of entrepreneurs got Bs and Cs in school. They weren't A students because they didn't necessarily have the conative MO and conative is the part of the mind through which we use our instincts. Entrepreneurs are not taught or trained, they're born. So are good quarterbacks in terms of the kind of mentality it takes. And indeed, if we used the Colby and looked at the instinctive drive, we would find we'd be better to know whether or not the person that we want for quarterback is a quick start. Both of you would make great quarterbacks. You are quarterbacks in your own fields. You're always doing the artful dodge, coming up with a new play, figuring out another way, encouraging the team to take a chance on this or that. That's what I call an action mode or a drive. That is drive from an instinct. So the cognitive test sets things as how good you're going to be in an academic environment. It does not test how good you'll be in a playing field or as an entrepreneur or in any particular endeavor. Work wise when you have to do something. The conative involves instinctive energy and drive or how you take action. Then there's this social style or personality type, the Myers, Briggs, the diss, performax, things like that. And those are measures that are rarely scientifically validated because we're different in one setting than another. Sometimes we're extrovert, sometimes we're introvert. Some people will say, well, in my family I'm an extrovert, but out in public I'm shy, I don't participate as much. It varies a great deal. And the people, Myers and Briggs, who created that instrument, who did their research at cocktail parties, watching behaviors in California, I might add, which is a pretty rarefied kind of database to start with. What they came up with were some very interesting social styles that have nothing to do with your long term behavior. It has to do with how you would prefer to be seen and how you would prefer to act. It's not what you will do or won't do, it's what you wish you could do. So the cognitive is what you know. The affective is your values, your feelings, your beliefs, your preferences. But this cognitive, the third part of the mind is what you are. It's your modus operandi, it's how you take action, it's your drive. For that reason, in my work I found that the results, you don't need to retake Licoldi because once you get a result, that's who you are. It doesn't change. You don't improve it with more education, you don't change it because you want to or people say you should. So that's what it is and isn't. And if I had my dreams come true. And by the way, they're starting to happen more and more just in the last couple years, amazing things happening. My dream is that every adolescent would learn their cognitive MO so that they would make good decisions on relationships, good decisions in terms of education, careers, so that they would get rid of the stress of trying to be something they're not. If we could give that gift to every child, our healthcare costs would go down because there wouldn't be so much stress that comes from doing things against your grain. People wouldn't be depressed so much because they have the joy of being themselves. It's all about freedom. And then there's one other incredibly important thing with the cognitive. There are the haves and have nots because it's measured on a bell shaped curve. There are people who have average iq, there are people who have above average and then highly above gifted. There are people who have lower IQs. And we keep trying to find nice words to say these things, but the fact of the matter is intelligence is not random. It's actually a bell shaped curve. And there are many people who are gifted as have problems with low iq. With the affect, you can't measure it in terms of population, but almost every affective social style test praises extrovert. Well, I know you guys pretty well and you know me pretty well. You know I'm an introvert. I don't happen to want to change that or see any need to change it or understand why these tests see that as a bad thing. But we now give introverted shy kids pills. There are doctors who prescribe pills for shyness as if it's a disease. Things like that are just a calamity. So is giving kids drugs so they won't act like you. All three of us act naturally. I mean we're all ADD ADHD if we were to use the language used most of the time for that. And yet at least two of us aren't. I won't say which two. We're not really ADD adhd. We're quick start resistant, follow through or fact finder people who do our own thing. So equality is the other major issue I care so much about and think the Colby is helping us say it's not good or bad, right or wrong. We're all equally creative, we're not equally endowed with iq. We're not all equally extroverted, if that's what you think is good. But we are Equally creative through the Colby instincts to create or solve problems.

Gotcha. So I'd like to kind of go down this road with describing to the listeners how they can use Colby. I'm really going to speak to both you and Dan, because Dan is the top coach in the world, for he's coached more successful entrepreneurs than anyone on the planet. And so you being the creator of this, and then Dan being such a great spokesperson for it and user of it, I mean, he utilizes it throughout his entire company and then teaches all of his clients and what he calls multipliers and game changers in the Strategic Coach program how to use it to make decisions, help groups thrive, increase bottom line, build teams, that sort of stuff. So I'd almost like to break it down in those catego, like, how can listeners use Colby, starting with making decisions? And then let's go through that, and I'd love to hear both of your perspectives on that.

I'd start by saying that the main thing that Dan does so beautifully is he uses everyday language, common sense situations to describe the power of being who you are and using that talent to help others. Not just yourself, but others, work in teams and to successfully thrive by having that freedom to look at your Colby result and saying, yep, this is who I am, and I'm going to do this. I'm going to be who I am. So, Dan, talk about the magic that you use to do that, because I think it's brilliant.

Well, I think I really live my Colby profile. I mean, it's a daily strategy for me. And the numbers that are mine, which are two, in fact, finder two and follow through, 10 and quickstart and four and implementer really are the design of my everyday as I create new concepts for the entrepreneurs, as I market Strategic Coach. And also, you know, a major part of my time is actually being in the workshops and coaching the entrepreneurs. But it also, to a certain extent, Kathy, is that it made me an ideal client for what you offer, because you kind of had me at hello. You know, I mean, I didn't have to do a lot of research. I said, oh, I've been looking for this, so let's get it and let's implement it. So I didn't have to do a lot of research. And the other thing is, my to follow through really allows me to adapt something that already exists. I don't have to create something from scratch. And then the 10 quick start is, well, the best way to take action is just to take action. So why don't we just get started, and then we'll modify it as we have experience with it, or we'll get a better way of talking about it just from our daily experience. But then the other thing is I'm a trained artist and my implementer tends to come out and drawing pictures of other people's ideas or ideas that we're doing. So I just basically adapt my circumstances to the best use of those four things. And then I would say, Joe, you're asking the question. For me, Colby is the greatest team building concept in the world. To me, the whole multiplication of an entrepreneur doesn't start by treating the individual just who they are in terms of their Colby profile. It's given what their profile is. What other profiles do they have to team up with in order to get a real multiplier effect. And for me, I have to team up with people who are not like me. I have to team up with people who are really good at fact finding and very prone to fact finding and very, very good at setting up systems so that they recur in an excellent way. And I also need people who can also counteract too much of Dan. I have to counteract in certain situations, I have a tendency to not leave well enough alone. And the other thing is, in all the other areas, I just need a vast array of different passions and things that people just do naturally well. And I can bet on this. And I think probably the best way of describing my preference for what you do, Kathy, over anything, any other analysis of how human beings think or behave or perform, is that you're the only system that I would be willing to bet on, that I could bet on a person being this way today, and I could bet on a person being this way 10 years from now, and that there isn't going to be any bad bet if I get it right.

And let me interject there, Dan, that to me, that's what builds trust.

Yeah.

If I can trust you to do the follow through work, which means to build its systems and maintain them, then I don't have to do it. And if I trust you, then I've bet on you. But that also means our relationship is built on trust, which is such a strong foundation.

Yesterday, when I was just introducing Christie to actually give the presentation and explain the profiles that they had gotten over the previous 90 days, I said, I just want to say one sentence about the use of the Colby it doesn't absolutely guarantee success when you're hiring people, but I can tell you not using it to hire someone will absolutely guarantee failure. So I said, there's always character issues. Somebody may have the right profile, but they might not be honest. And I said, you can't test for honesty. So there's all sorts of character issues which are, I think, still lie in the realm of mystery as far as human beings are going. But insofar it is that if they really are focused on what they're doing and you get the right profile for them, you can bet on that that they'll do what you want them to do. And I said, gee, I said, how many of you have wasted tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, some cases millions of dollars at just bad hires and just not putting people in the right situation, not creating the right kind of teamwork? And I said, you know, this is probably. I said, if an entrepreneur is lying awake, frustrated, angry and scared at 2:00 in, it has to do with not having the right people in the right places.

That's such a good point. I want to ask you both about something you said, Dan, where you made a couple of comments. You made a lot of great comments, but teaming up with people that are not like you is one of them. Because I think people have a tendency, until I discovered something like Colby. Absolutely. I'm attracted to people that are like me, they think like me, they behave like me, they're idea people. And what I would find is that, oh, I'd sit around talking about great ideas with people that are fun to share ideas and are very creative, but then nothing's getting done because there's not follow through there. And so you mentioned that. And then the second thing was you having a tendency to not leave well enough alone. And I could totally relate to that also. So you utilize this as a protection mechanism from you getting outside of boundaries, that you don't play well there. I wanted to ask Kathy about. I think most people, I mean, I may be wrong, but most of the entrepreneurs that I meet, they may have some resistance to that, saying, well, someone that's complete opposite of me, they may not relate to them. Because if someone's boisterous and outspoken and really quick to take action, they may look at someone who's reflective and thinking about it and saying, well, that's not a really good person, but it could be an amazing person for them. So how would you describe that sort of scenario?

Well, we describe it as a certain conative stress. And sometimes that stress is what gives us energy and we thrive on it because we're working with someone who does it differently. We see a different point of view. We have to incorporate that into the project and sometimes we have to let go and say, okay, that's your part of it. We do a lot of relationship counseling, a lot of work with families. My favorite thing is to work with family owned businesses because there are all kinds of stereotypes by gender, age and of course in the world there are racial stereotypes too. But we find this equality between men and women conatively and not just the genders. But we don't change by age and the races don't differ. So if we can say the one part of us that's equal is our cognitive energy, my energy is different from yours. So we came up with this report which is a favorite of all our clients. I don't know Dan, if you use it, but the one on one report where we use an arrow of energy and we compare two people's energy because you start with the mode in which you have the greatest amount of energy. You both start with quick start, but some people then will start with factfinder and they're looking at their research while you're looking at ideas. With this one on one report, we do an analysis of how you can work together, doing things differently and coming out at the end with so much more strength than you would have had if you'd been working either alone or with people like yourself. The single biggest problem in any organization is inertia in the conative energy. A group of quick starts will fail. Every time. You bring me an organization made up of a bunch of initiating quick starts with nobody balancing that and I'll say sell short, get out of there, this isn't going to work. But don't actually get out. What I do is say bring in, bring in the people who fill in your gaps. So I think when we look at the implications, if you understand all of this, if you get people certified on Colby who can really interpret it for you, that's to me the way that the entrepreneurs listening to this can really use it best. Get someone in your organization who has some follow through or fact finder to get trained on Colby. Get certified. It's a three day program and then they become your in house expert and they can start doing for you what Christy is, as Dan is talking about does for Strategic coach. I mean it's important to have people who are not standing in judgment but are pointing out. Okay, Dan, enough of that quick start. Let somebody else digest it and ask questions for a while. All three of us will say, what? You didn't get it the first time? No, not everybody does. And we need people to keep Pointing that out to us.

Yeah, no, that's great. One thing I should also mention here early on, so that someone doesn't think this is like a setup for some super costly sort of thing. Talk about how easy it is and how available and accessible doing just a Colby profile on yourself individually is. I mean, everyone that is listening to this, if they don't, after listening to this episode, go and do a Colby, I mean, they're just limiting themselves tremendously. And Dan was right when he said the cost of a MIS hire could be tens of thousands, if not in the millions, for entrepreneurs. So how does one get a Colby? And then we'll keep talking about it.

Well, you can just go online. There's a Colby app. Just go to the Colby A index, Google it, get the app, and you can take the Colby index right away on your. But you can also go on your computer and go to Colby K O L B E.com and there you'll get the whole story, all the research. I'm a research nut. Even though I'm a resistant or counteractive fact finder, I don't naturally do a lot of research. But for this, it was a moral imperative. I had to have the data. And after 10 years of research, I finally put the system online. So for many years, we've been able to put it out there for people. So you can just go online and get it. I like to say it costs less than one bungee jump.

There you go. I think it's much less than that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, bungee jumps used to be cheaper. No, it's under $50. We practically give away the one for kids under 10 bucks because we care so much about kids, seeing their results. And very soon we're going to have a career program. I'm sitting here working on it day after day. I'm immersed in it. We'll have over 1200 careers rated for you individually according to your MO or your result, and a little survey on it where we can say, what kind of a job are you suited to? Your audience are mostly entrepreneurs, but this is not genetic. And you have kids, folks who aren't necessarily entrepreneurs, just because you are. There is no correlation between identical twins who have the same DNA and their Colby result. So we can have kids who vary so much from us, and it's hard for us to tell them, well, this would be perfect for you. The career program does that. And it's been something I've worked on for eight years, and we're finally going to come out with it this fall. But it's all so easy. Just go to colby.com. we just make it very, very easy. And we do seminars all over the place. I love to do webinars and teleconferences on health and education issues. My kids are running Colby Corp. For all the B2B stuff.

Gotcha. Okay. And you know, Dan, I could ask questions forever here, but I want to hand it off to you because I'm sure there are things you'd like to say or ask or discuss. So I want to make sure I don't give you that opportunity.

Well, I'm just going to do the serve here, Joe. I mean, you talked about being introduced to Kathy's work in 1997. What was your life before 1997? And progressively, what is your life after 1997 just in terms of your growing understanding of the impact of the Colby profile?

One thing that you used the word liberated a couple of times in discussions with me that completely changed not only the direction of my thinking, but that changed the direction of my life. And the first time I heard you talk about liberation is where you said, when I took my Colby, I became liberated because I was no longer. And you may have said it differently, but from what I can recall and the way I interpret it was you didn't have a high follow through. And your whole notion of I can get anything done that I want in life as long as I'm not the one that completes it. And when you were talking about it, you said, I became very liberated when I understood my mouth, when I did my kolbe, and realized, oh, you know, I'm a high, quick start. So I'm all about ideas, but I'm low follow through that I need to actually put people in place in my life, that they're really high follow through. So, like my assistant, Eunice, who has been with me this year in March, she's been my personal assistant for 20 years. She's also certified in Colby. We had lunch with Kathy and David a couple weeks ago here in Phoenix because me and Kathy live in the same town here in the same area. And because of that, that it allowed me to hire not only people in ways that I probably never would have hired, but certain type of people. And to start developing a support structure around me and being okay, that I didn't need to get my hands into everything. And I still have the tendency to do that. I mean, there's part of me that I hate details, but I know how important they are. Had I not come across Colby, I mean, I would have Been a train wreck in a lot of ways because I just never would have known any better. The other time, just since I mentioned it, that you said liberated is when my father was dying and I felt guilty because I wanted his pain to end. But you don't want a parent to die. And at the same time I was talking with you using the term liberation, knowing that when my father finally passed and he was liberated from really bad suffering that he was going through the last days of his life, there was a relief and I didn't feel bad about wanting that to end. And it actually helped me interpret death in a completely different way because I think of liberation a lot. You just want to be liberated from suffering and from obligations that are not necessary. But I never would have had even that context of liberation had it not started with you originally introducing me to Colby and explaining it that way. So I think it has liberated me from a tremendous amount of messes that never even occurred because I had a method of keeping myself out of them. So. So I'm certainly not perfect. There's all kinds of things in my life that are challenges and struggles from my addictive mindset and personality. But in terms of a tool and a resource to build up a group of individuals and teams around me, I mean, it's been instrumental. And you made that comment of staring at the ceiling at 2:00am I mean, I could assure you that a lot of people listening to that, just hearing that, they can be like, oh, that's me right now. And this is a way to actually, it's a key that will let you out of a lot of the hell that you can get yourself into. So that's how I would probably describe it.

One of the things that I've noticed, because our organization, we have right now we're at about 120 team members in coach. About 60 of them have been with us for more than 10 years. Kathy. We get to talk in short periods of time with durations in between. But one of the things that I've really, really noticed about the long term impact, when you have a cult that really starts with the Colby profile, the thing that I notice most is this enormous sense of respect that grows up between people just based on their conative differences. I have this enormous growth of appreciation and respect based on not that people are like me, but they're not like me. And I think that we're having a lot of tension in society right now because people are demanding that people be like them or people perform like them. And I think that the growth of civilization is really based on an increase of appreciation, respect and real fondness for people because they're really different.

Such a good point. I don't think a news cycle goes by that I don't see some cognitive impact. And if only they understood. I mean, change sometimes has to happen with follow through resistance, quick starts being able to incorporate it into their rituals. They need to go through a process of change. So those of us who initiate change through our quick start need to understand that counteractive energy that isn't necessarily biased against what we're trying to do. It just has its own need to do it its own way. So these people who are resisting some kinds of changes that we could maybe all agree are essential economically, morally, whatever, but let them go through their process. And I want to scream at the TV sometimes and just say, let them do it their way. We'll all get there if we can do it our own ways. I think there's too little of that.

Yeah, Joe, one of the things, Kathy, I think you may not know this, but I really make Joe responsible for a whole area of my life that I'm just not really good at doing. And one of them is Joe is just one of the greatest connectors that I've ever met in my life. And I can work at being a connector. But it wasn't very long into my relationship with Joe where I said to myself, you know, I'm not going to be a connector for the rest of my life. I'm not even going to work at it. I'm just going to have Joe's email address and Joe's phone number. Anytime I want to make a connection, I'm just going to tell him about it because he can't help himself from being a connector. So I'm just going to take advantage of the fact that he absolutely can't. It's impossible for Joe not to be a connector. So I've just saved myself not just hours or weeks, I've saved myself years of striving to do something that I just really don't have any gas in the tank for. And I think that there's a lot of things, Joe, that. That you bring me into your part of life too, because it's just very, very easy for me to do those things.

Yeah, totally. And one of the reasons, Kathy, that I like Dan so much, because people that know me well know that I'm really well studied, I attend a lot of stuff. I've got this insatiable curiosity and I'm always interested in stuff and I'VE spent a lot of time probably consuming things that I didn't need to consume, but I'm totally curious about stuff. But I have stuck with strategic coach for so many years. And I say stayed with it, but I don't consider I'm stuck with anything related to Strategic coach. As a matter of fact, being in it keeps me unstuck. And when I get stuck, I go to a workshop and it helps me get unstuck. The reason, though, is that the beauty of Dan with his creation of unique ability. Dan is the very best person I've ever met. At looking at someone and seeing what's right with them, them and how to enhance it versus so many people that call themselves coaches and self help gurus take the approach of what's wrong with someone and how to fix it. And I think a lot of this comes from using Colby and being able to identify that people are different, people have different skill sets. And Dan can go in and just zero in on where someone's talent is and learn how to not use it or exploit it in a bad way, but utilize it and create value out of it. So it becomes a win, win situation. Because there are so many people that are just takers and there are other people that just build upon someone's skills and actually makes it stronger. And one of the ways that you can really help someone is edifying them. Edifying them in a legitimate way. Not like a kiss ass manner, but really identify what someone does and encourage them to that do those things. Like the saying that I first heard from Dan is if you spend your life trying to strengthen your weaknesses, at the end of your life, you're going to have a lot of really strong weaknesses. So look at what your strengths are and keep developing them. And that's what I think. The collaboration here between the three of us and even talking about Colby is really, in our own different ways, that's what we're wanting to bring to everyone that's listening to this is like, how do you build a better entrepreneur? How do you build a better human being? How do you get people out of quicksand? And part of it is just knowing yourself, knowing the people that you work with, and knowing the people that you're going to bring onto your team before you bring them onto the team. So not only you do yourself a favor, but you don't bring people in and have expectations that they're never going to live up to. That's what this does. But I think me and Dan work so well together. We both know how to utilize each other's strengths and we play off of it. And both of us are very similar in our value systems and our thinking and a lot of stuff. But we're coming completely different in many areas in terms of personality and behavior and how we go about doing stuff. But together, understanding that about each other, we create a lot of magic and we help a tremendous amount of people in the process.

A week doesn't go by that I don't hear from somebody about how much they were helped by one of you guys. I constantly get the feedback that if I'm doing a seminar, there are going to be people in that room who have benefited from what you guys are doing and will come tell me about how. Boy, when they use your work, it just makes a difference in my life. And I think that's what the synergy in really strong relationships is all about. We help each other, and in doing that, the synergy of what we do reaches out and helps a multitude of other people. None of us can do it alone. That's the one thing I'm sure of. We have to work synergistically. And that's why I love this phone call. I love talking with you guys, because for years now, we've had a lot of synergy.

Well, I think the thing's really interesting, Kathy. I mean, if we see each other once a year for breakfast or lunch or dinner, that's kind of our quota for the year. But right from the very beginning, I've always felt that regardless of what each of us is doing on our own, that we're completely in sync with each other, you know, our purpose in life. And Joe, I feel that way with you. You know, I don't have to think, gee, I wonder where Joe is going and what he's getting involved in. I always feel that we're in sync, and I think it comes from that identification of what the person is just naturally good at and what they're always going to be expanding in their life. So it's kind of interesting because on the one hand, you have the Facebook issue where people feel that they're getting out of touch with each other if they haven't contacted them two or three times a day. And on the other hand, I have a growing number of long term relationships where they're extremely valuable and we contribute enormously to each other, but we actually don't see each other that much. We don't actually talk to each other that much. But when we talk, there's always a jump to the next level in teamwork. But I always have the feeling that I'm completely in sync. I mean, from day one, when I met Babs. You may not know this, Joe, but Will and Kathy were married on a day in June in 1986, and actually two days, June 20th and 21st, 1986. And Babs and I were married on two days in June in 1986, and it was June 20th and 21st.

Wow.

The two couples, we were exactly married on the same two days in June in 1986, and we were having lunch, I think, at the Ritz, Kathy. And we said that night and went, woo, woo, woo. I mean, there was kind of like.

You know, how many people take two days to get married?

Yeah, yeah.

But a lot of the enormous success in Strategic Coach is that from the very first, almost moment that I met her, I just felt this complete synchronicity between myself and Babs. And it's really interesting because in our cases, with regard to the Colby profile, we're very, very similar to each other. Babs is a 3, 3, 9, 2, and I'm a 2, 2, 10, 4. So the biggest difference that we have is actually two in the implementer. But the reason why it works is that we have a complete division of labor inside of Coach, and that is that I'm completely in charge of the program and she's completely in charge of the company. I always say it's the workshop door that is the division between my world and Bab's world. Everything on the inside of the door, inside the workshop, is mine. Everything on the outside of the door is hers. She has complete say on the outside and I have complete say on the inside. And we do not conflict at all. But each of us in our own realms then, is working with teams of people who are not like us at all. They're very, very different from us. And we've each put together teams in our respective areas where we get the full benefit of all the different profiles and all the different abilities that show up in the fact finding, follow through, quick start and implementer. So the big thing is just to have complete team synergy, where you have every ability that Kathy has identified. They're all represented inside the team. So it's an engine that has a lot of different gears and shifts.

That's fantastic. I had no idea that you guys were married so close together. It's very interesting how things work.

Yeah. So next year is the 30th, Kathy.

I think we should start planning now to be together.

I think we have to give some.

Thought to this yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

But since we're both quick starts, somebody else is going to actually have to do this.

Your follow through and my follow through are going to get together with our calendars.

I was about to say the cliche phrase. Well, you heard it here first. But I mean, that's what a quick start would do. They would just come up with this stuff and just start talking about it right now.

I mean, as far as I'm concerned. I don't know about you, Kathy, but it's a done deal. I mean, I don't see any.

It is a done deal.

I don't see anything standing in the way between what we just said and what's going to happen.

I don't either. In fact, my mind is already thinking of the weirdest things we could possibly do.

That is total comedy. Well, here's what I want to do on the time that we have available. Kathy, before we were starting this conversation, you were talking about what you're working on now and what you're most excited about, which we thought was quite fascinating, and said, well, gosh, why don't we just share that on this recording? So a couple of things I want to recommend to the listeners. For one, go to Kolbe.com, k, O, L, B E, do your Colby A and just do it and learn about it and start utilizing this with your team. You can find all kinds of information at the website. You can download the Colby app if you'd like. So that's one thing that I want to recommend for everyone. And on 10xtalk.com, we will put the show notes and we will put links so that you can find out any related things to any materials that Kathy would like to share from links to her books or anything as simple as starting with just Colby.com and going there. So that's the one thing I want to recommend all the listeners. Do you need to do that? And secondly, Kathy, what are you up to now? What is it that you're working on that would be very valuable for people to know about and hear with what your current passion is?

Well, I can't wait to share with all of you the career, the Colby career program, the software. So watch our site. It'll be ready in September, October, I'm hoping, and it's for all ages. What I've just finished, because that's almost done, is a new book that brings up to date and solves some problems with the Colby theory, where I knew everything was a strength. There are no weaknesses in our God given Conative abilities. But when we talk about the short lines, people start interpreting that as, oh, Dan, you both actually are resistant and follow through. And that term resistant has a negative sound to it. And that shouldn't be a negative. A short line and a resistor. Just the wrong way to think about it. So I spent a lot of time thinking about what's the right way to say it, what's the right language. So each of the Colby action modes that you just went through, factfinder. The way we deal with gathering information and follow through, how we store and sort it and Quick Start, how we deal with unknowns and implement are how we deal with the tangible world around us. Each of those has three zones of action. The first is how we initiate. So you guys are both very long lines in Quick Start, and you're in the zone where you initiate risk and dealing with uncertainty. In the mid zone, people are actually reacting to your impetus. You come up with an idea and you need people around you who react to it, who carry it on, who do something with it, and then you need people who counteract. So you've both mentioned that you need people in your life who will stop you from going too far. Well, those are the people who, in the same mode where you have a strength, they have the strength to be counteractive to you. And in physics, we know that action counteraction is so important to continuous movement. You get that motion, you get that energy when people counteract you. So I've changed the term from resist, which I haven't liked for years, finally figured out, no, no, no, no, no, it is a counteraction. And that mid zone is a reaction. And that's true in every one of the modes. The other thing I started to look at was the fact that, gosh, in the counteract follow through, people get beat up a lot because, oh, you weren't where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there. Oh, you didn't finish the assignment. Oh, you started it, but you didn't conclude it. Oh, you leave a mess behind and everybody's got to pick up all the loose ends. It's so negative. And yet this is a strength. So in this new book, which is entitled Striving Zones, and it's only 90 pages, it's a quick read, then it's online. Striving Zones describes all the strengths in being able to counteract and follow through. And one of the great words that I love about it is I've included the sense of randomness. If you aren't Free to come up with your random ideas and just throw them out there and see what happens. Then that talent, which is your resistance to follow through, not your insistence, quick start. Your randomness is because you don't follow a routine. You don't do things in the box. You need to check out other alternatives. You need to multitask. That whole argument about multitasking, it's clear that it is the preventative counteractive. Now, counteractive follow throughs are the ones who multitask. And people who initiate and follow through don't even believe that it's possible to do it, let alone sensible. So think of that randomness, think of that being able to multitask. Think about the options that the counteractive follow through contributes. And then another one that is rarely rewarded is the initiation in implementer. Implementer, the sense of space around us, the use of tools and equipment, of implements. So misunderstood. I hear so many people say, I don't need implementer in my company. Well, this book celebrates implementer with the right words, and it's taken me years to figure out those words, so I'm thrilled that I finally have come up with them. That implementer is celebrated properly, that it is safety, it is quality, it's exploration of the environment. So that's what I've been doing. And it's taken me down some interesting paths. It's put me in the fact finder where I don't live comfortably, but. But it was a good experience and I'm thrilled that book is out there.

Awesome. Well, thank you. I mean, Dan, any final things that you'd like to add? And then we'll leave the listeners to go off and do their Colby and learn all about it and people that already do do it. I'd love to have their comments about how they utilize Colby and any insights they got from this episode. They can post their comments@10xtalk.com but yeah. Any final thoughts, Dan?

Yeah, well, I'm just sitting here and feeling so positive about the decision I made 20 years ago not to spend a single second trying to develop or deepen or expand the Colby profile system, because I know that every single second of every day over the last 20 years, Kathy's been hard at it.

Thank you for that.

You know, and I haven't had to spend a moment of energy or anything to just have this system be better every year, because I can totally bet that she's going to be doing it. So just think of all the enormous frustration and failure that I have saved myself.

Oh, you're such A joy to talk with both of you.

That's such a huge insight. Just that whole thought there as Dan's like, let things just be. There's other people that are doing the work, and I'll leave that to them, you know, and some people just don't operate that way. They're like, no, I must go and meddle with it and just make my life.

No, I've got to spend an enormous amount of time telling Kathy how to improve her own system. There doesn't have to be hell in the afterlife if you spend your time doing that sort of thing in this life.

Right, right. I think it also leads into something that I've heard you say, Dan, which is going to seem off topic, but to me, I don't think it is where you're saying at the end of all this. I don't think you get any extra points if you didn't go first class. Part of your whole thing is live the best life you can live. If you're going to use tools every single day and interact with people every single day, utilize things that other people have figured out that are simply going to make every aspect of your life more pleasurable, more profitable, more exciting. Because it's one thing about the financial paycheck, it's another thing about the psychological paycheck. There you go. Any famous last words from you, Kathy, and then we'll call it a wrap.

It's just a joy to talk with both of you. Thanks so much.

Absolutely. Thank you. And I always, always find these discussions incredibly valuable. And so finally, for our listeners, we really think we've provided you with something here that absolutely will help you 10 times your business and your life only if you avail yourself of it. So go to kolbe.com one more time, k O L B E. And just do a profile. Learn about it. And if you have teams of people, do it for everyone that works for you, I think you'll see that it is never a cost. It is an incredible investment. And then come back to 10xtalk.com and let us know what you learned about it. What did this episode do for you? How are you using it to build and grow your business 10 times and making your life better? And if you currently do not subscribe to 10X Talk, you can do so on itunes or you can go to our website and subscribe wherever this podcast is available, which is in a lot of places. So thank you for listening and Dan and Kathy, thank you guys.

I appreciate it.