Tell me about your vision. Well, I was trained
formally as an architect. And after 20 years
or so, I was noticing all the conflict in that
business. And we also had an internal struggle
with one of our partners who was an alcoholic.
We hired in help to help. my name was Linda,
helped us through this mess with our partner.
And I was really attracted to how she did what
she did. I mean, we were smart architects, but
we were dumb as far as people. So she helped
us navigate through that. And I got totally curious
and also inspired by the work that she did with
us. And so I started working with her. I did
some studies. And in a course of four years,
I changed careers. I studied the ontology of
language and mediation and other things, changed
careers at a young 40. And that training and
that work that I did around language and conversations
really changed my life. And so now fast forward
20 years later, I started writing a book because
I wanted to share all the things that made a
difference in my life and also all the things
that made a difference to my client's life. lives
because I was working with Fortune 200 executives
for the last 20 years. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you
for sharing that. I think changing careers, I
think personally, I don't believe that it's ever
too late to change careers or do something. I
think if someone wants to do something in their
70s, that's equally, if not better, as good as
someone trying to do something in their 20s.
Yeah, absolutely. So tell me more about your
journey from 40 years to now 60 years and also
writing the book at the same time. Yeah. What's
that story like? Well, it's actually a bit of
a longer story because the consulting work and
the advising and coaching work that I've been
doing was my third career. My first was music.
My second was architecture. And my third was
consulting, advising, coaching. And the theme
throughout all of that wasn't that I was rejecting
what I was doing. I love music. I was a successful
musician early in my life. But I fell in love
with something else. And so I was willing to
listen to that attraction. that you know inspiration
and then be willing to take a gamble and say
you know what i love what i'm doing but i i really
want to try this and so it takes a bit of a little
takes courage to go yeah i don't know what it
looks like but it's really really feels right
to me in my mind in my heart um and so i made
the leap and that's true with using from architecture
to consulting and advising And in some ways,
it's also true about my book, where I later on
after consulting for all these years, I sort
of had a story in my own head that I couldn't
write a book, that I needed help. And it took
me a while to just let go of that story and say,
you know what, that's my next career of writing.
And so that each one is like an attraction to
something new and then taking the courage to
jump in and just do it. Yeah. Thank you for sharing
that. Tell me more about the title of the book.
It's a very intriguing title. How did that come
about? Well, titles are sort of a dance between
the writer, the author, and the publisher. And
so the nature of the book is that fundamentally
we learn to be in conversation we learn our conversational
patterns from our family our culture we just
sort of pick it up and so we're never really
taught the ABCs of conversations how they work
why they work and why they fail and so the purpose
of the book was try to lay down some DNA of how
conversations work and why they work and how
we can do them better and so that was That was
the intent of the book, to try to compile all
the things I had learned that really changed
my life and share with other people. So that's
the intent, yeah. So what do you hope that the
book achieves? What do you achieve through the
book? Yeah. Well, for me, I still have consult.
I mean, I just still do advising and coaching
with people individually. I have some corporations
I work with. But basically the book is, I put
it out in the world to give people a window into,
give people a new window into conversations.
Like really, because we often are in conversations
on automatic pilot. We have our patterns, we
have our habits. But if you're in a stressful
situation or a situation where you're uncomfortable,
then you can step back and go, what's going on
here? Why am I reacting the way I'm reacting?
Why are they judging me the way they're judging
me? And if we can deconstruct a little bit of
that, then we have a new lens into what the hell
is happening. So we don't continue repeating
the same negative patterns or the same responses
that don't get us anywhere. So it's the way of,
in a way, I want to... the conscious conversations
part is let's wake let's wake up in conversations
rather than being sleep talking we can wake up
and be more conscious and be more aware of what
we can do and say and how we can interact in
new ways. Thank you for being here today. I'm
really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros
Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward. This
is going to get more and more fun. We'll have
more and more engagement as well. We'll invite
people to participate in the show. And thank
you for giving us your time and attention. Have
an excellent time building out your vision and
becoming a vision pro yourself.