09: Ask Great Questions With Carl Lubbe
Behind Their Success Ep 9: Carl Lubbe Transcript
Carl Lubbe: [00:00:00] Who are the people in your life who you feel so seen or cared for when you're around them?Guess what? It's because they ask great questions.
Hello, I'm Paden Squires, and I'm the host of the podcast. This podcast is for those who are dissatisfied with where they are at in their life and career currently. I used to be one. When I got out of college with my master's degree, I started working in banking. I eventually moved to a Fortune 500 company.I quickly found out being an employee was not for me. I was bored out of my mind and did not like it whatsoever. Something eventually lit a fire under me. I started studying for the CPA exam, listening to podcasts, and reading books every day. By doing that, I had passed all four parts of the CPA exam in eight months and quit my job.
I opened up my own tax firm, having never been paid to do someone's taxes. That was in 2014. Since then, I've consistently grown my business. Had a lot of success in other business ventures, including real estate, [00:01:00] property management, among other things. And now, I'm looking for a new venture. I want to help inspire you and other entrepreneurs to achieve their potentials and dreams, as well as learn from the stories of these entrepreneurs, as to see what has gone well, and what hasn't gone well for them.
Let's go create a bunch of healthy, wealthy, and wise entrepreneurs.
Paden Squires: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Behind Their Success podcast. Today we have a special guest with you, Mr. Carl Lubbe. He is the founder and CEO of Curiosity Coach, a consulting firm specializing in executive coaching and culture development. He was born and raised in South Africa. Carl has a background in both music and coaching.
Paden Squires: Bringing a unique perspective to his work, he has helped individuals and organizations tap into their curiosity and unlock their full potential, working with clients ranging from small startups to well [00:02:00] established companies such as Chick-fi- A. Through his coaching, Carl has helped numerous companies improve employee retention and increase revenue with clients often praising his services as priceless.
Paden Squires: In fact, his work has saved clients hundreds of thousands of dollars in employee retention and revenue creation. He has a deep understanding of the importance of positive company culture and the impact it can have on employee satisfaction and overall business success. Carl's a guy that I've personally got to know a little bit over the last year or so.
Paden Squires: Despite being a University of Georgia fan, he's a guy that when he talks, I certainly perk up and listen and take notes. his ability to articulate how to work through problems that you encounter, really in life and especially in business, is some of the best stuff I've heard. super excited to welcome.
Carl Lubbe: Hey man, thanks so much for having me on. It's always humbling to hear somebody else give your eulogy while you're still alive like that. So I appreciate the kind [00:03:00] words. Is this stuff we do priceless? I guess somebody else said it. So thank you, I guess is what I would say.
Paden Squires: It's everything we said there. getting to know your last year or so, you've, you've certainly proven to me. I don't want to say not that you need to prove anything to me, but shown me kind of your ability to help people understand branding and culture.
Paden Squires: And the importance of that is, It's pretty impressive.
Carl Lubbe: Oh, I appreciate that. I mean,the feeling is mutual to, come across people in the financial spaces who are really interested in humans as much as they are the numbers and the output and have great professionalism and a sense of people is a rare gift mix So it's been great getting to know you as well So
Paden Squires: Carl, Give me some more of your background, just a little more detail. Who's Carl? Where'd he come from and how'd you get where
Carl Lubbe: you're at now? Yeah. So I think the wildest part is really how I got to the state. So I live in Atlanta, Georgia. Now I've got a lovely wife. We've been together 18 years now, and I've got two kids.
Carl Lubbe: But the way that I got to the States is. My father, [00:04:00] immigrated from a country called Zimbabwe into South Africa and then had me and my brothers and it was, my dad, mom, my grandmother, we all lived together. And my dad had this kind of harebrained question that kind of changed our whole life.
Carl Lubbe: He was like, I wonder if we could live in the States now in the 80s. This is not a thing. it's so funny having lived in the States now for more than 30 years and what people think immigration is and what it actually is and how difficult it is to actually accomplish. you might as well have said, Hey, I wonder what it's like to be a billionaire.
Carl Lubbe: Like the idea of getting to the States was such a far fetched thing. It was so difficult to do. My dad was that kind of visionary dreamer. And then he finds a company of all places in the middle of Africa in a place that used to be called Zaire. That's called the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And he was like, Okay, they've offered me a job.
Carl Lubbe: So if I go there, and then I work for a year, they'll send me on a paid holiday anywhere in the world, we'll use that to go to the States on vacation, and I'll see if I can get a [00:05:00] job. And then that's how we'll get there. My dad is a little bit of a harebrained dreamer like I am. And it worked. I still to this day have no idea.
Carl Lubbe: That's like the world's worst travel agent. You're going to go through Central Africa and then hang a left and go to the States. But what was really interesting was all of this work. The plan worked out. We went to the U. S. and you're like, okay, after a year of living in Central Africa, what's the place in the U.S. you're going to go to? You're going to go to L. A. or New York. Like, where are you going? East Tennessee. Let's go to Dollywood. That's where we're going to go. And, but the reason for this, there's some method in the madness is my dad had a friend who he'd worked with in a foundry in South Africa, who ran a foundry in East Tennessee.
Carl Lubbe: And this is the guy who ended up getting us the job. So we go back after our month long holiday back to Zaire and my dad gives his notice. And they said, Oh, you didn't understand, like you're not leaving. And what do you mean? It's like, well, we can't find another one of you, and you don't leave until we tell you [00:06:00] you can leave.
Carl Lubbe: And then I think all the chips fell into place. It's oh, Zaire is a dictatorship and you have connections to the dictator. Like you're telling me, I don't have the freedom now to leave the country. And we also really understood that now we're a flight risk. Like we left once. So if we leave again, we don't come back.
Carl Lubbe: And so now it becomes very clear to my dad, we're basically under house arrest. And so at that point we had become friends with some missionaries from Orlando, Florida, and they basically chipped in enough cash to buy a one way one plane ticket for my dad. So one of my earliest memories is like an eight year old watching my dad climb in the back of a cab, somebody sliding a blanket over him and him driving off.
Carl Lubbe: And not knowing what happened. And later on understood that, got in the, crossed the border into Zambia, hopped a flight from Lusaka to JFK in New York, and then that starts the new life, but we had no idea how this was going to end for anybody else. and so [00:07:00] fast forward, these missionaries help raise enough cash doing yard sales over the next six or eight weeks.
Carl Lubbe: And I remember my mom. After we got five one way plane tickets, the rest of us opened the window of the house And I remember vividly watching her just toss the house keys into the house. We just left everything so we came to the States with two suitcases and a hundred bucks and You know just same story back of the cab underneath a blanket across the border into Zambia And so it's you know, my life is has been this really beautiful testament, not to our, courage, cause people use that word.
Carl Lubbe: I think it's a testament to me of two things, the kindness of strangers, because it was these missionaries who got us here. It was the kindness of strangers over the course of the next 10 years that helped us literally survive in the States. because the company that brought us over six months after we were here went bankrupt.
Carl Lubbe: And so we were in these really hard spots without immigration, without. work without any place to turn to. And there wasn't a country to go back to. [00:08:00] And so the kindness of strangers and then really my life's work stemmed out of this idea that one great question changed our whole life. And so curiosity, the curiosity of my dad to go, I wonder if we can get to the States, the curiosity to go, I wonder if we can sneak out of the country, the curiosity of going, I wonder if now we can get into this American university, and we can get it paid for.
Carl Lubbe: Like, everything in my life has been the direct result of this one idea that one great question can change everything.
Paden Squires: That's some really good stuff. That's, your story is, one of kind of your classic immigrant story. I know you say you downplayed the word courage, but the courage that actually took to make that decision to ask that question.
Paden Squires: I, it's hard to imagine. that's, especially, you put your family at risk, all those things that come along with that. as a father myself now, I just. Man, that would have been a very scary time. Oh
Carl Lubbe: yeah. You're so right. I, you're right. When I think about courage, I think about it for myself.
Carl Lubbe: So people [00:09:00] like, Oh, that's so courageous. It was like I was eight. There was no courage. There was only curiosity. There was only interest. But to your exact point, I've got a 10 year old and an eight year old now. And I will regularly because my mom just released her autobiography about her whole life experience.
Carl Lubbe: And this was one of the chapters, I cannot imagine the amount of courage it took to follow that curiosity and go, what if we could get this done? It's pretty mind blowing.
Paden Squires: tell me a little bit about what you do. What's your business? What's your superpower?
Carl Lubbe: Sure. One of my favorite things to do ever is to ask a great question. As I talked about before, I think curiosity is a superpower and I think it's one that can be developed. And, I have had the fortune of whether it was, as a traveling musician or as a leader of teams to be in this kind of people leadership development space for the last almost 20 years.
Carl Lubbe: And what I noticed very early on as a young leader was [00:10:00] simple answers did not go as far as great questions. Like somebody who walked in the room and said, this is how we're going to do this without engaging the room, without being curious, without having high emotional intelligence, the solution, even if it was the right one, was typically short lived because people didn't feel like they were connected to it.
Carl Lubbe: As opposed to when you're able to ask great questions and get people's buy in, get their involvement, get their engagement. it goes a lot further. And this is funny. It's an old African proverb. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go. And so I literally have turned that now into my entire business.
Carl Lubbe: My whole business is going. If you can ask great questions, you can build a better culture and you can create more revenue. So we call it the ABCs of a great culture. It's asking great questions to build a better culture that creates more revenue. and so every single day I coach executives and middle management and create systems for frontline new entry level workers to go, Oh, [00:11:00] How do we create a culture that asks great questions that aren't just philosophical?
Carl Lubbe: They're also highly practical because I think my superpower is melding those two worlds where there needs to be a great sense of the strategy of the philosophy of the culture. And then also that has to be incredibly connected to the tactical everyday practical application of how that culture plays itself out on a Tuesday at 10 a.
Carl Lubbe: m. And some sort of deliverable that the business needs in order to serve the client well and to deliver their product.
Paden Squires: yeah, you talk about asking great questions and it's building inside of a business of, a culture of always trying to create even win situations, right?
Paden Squires: Win situations for the client, win situations for the company. The employees, and continue to ask those questions to find out, like, how can we come together and truly all be pushing in the same direction? Absolutely.
Carl Lubbe: Yeah. we talk about this all the time as we've used the phrase, this is the third way.
Carl Lubbe: [00:12:00] And so in most businesses and most relationships, cause all businesses, relationships, this idea that, oh, it's not. personal, it's business that doesn't exist. All human interaction. Neurologically, you're looking at another human. And so it's a fallacy to imagine, Oh, it's just business. And so when it comes to that, we have this thought of most of our culture.
Carl Lubbe: There are books written about this, like the art of war or the art of the deal. Most of the philosophy behind these books is a zero sum game. If Paden wins, I lose. All right. I don't like that. Oh, if I win, Paden loses. Okay. I probably like that more. But then there's this third way of what does it look like for both people to win?
Carl Lubbe: Because when I'm coaching executives, a lot of what we talk about is even their personal life. And so one of the first places that I kind of joke about is, have you ever won an argument with your significant other? Did you really win? Did you win the battle, but you lost the war? And so our phrase for that is, in any relationship, if there is [00:13:00] one winner, there are two losers.
Carl Lubbe: Because you both lost in that exchange. However, if we'll pause, and get still, and ask a great question, there is always a win. always. We just haven't sat still long enough. To think through what the possible ramifications are, what the possible adjustments are. And that requires not a simpler answer, but a better question.
Carl Lubbe: And so I 100 percent agree with you. Most of what we're doing inside Curiosity Coach is helping people develop win solutions in places where it used to feel like, if the client wins, I lose. Or if I win, the client loses, so they don't stay. Or if I win, my colleague or employee loses. Or if my employee wins, I lose.
Carl Lubbe: And it's We just haven't sat with the problem long enough. Let's ask a different question. Let's reframe the paradigm.
Paden Squires: So,you say your skills are taking this philosophy and the practicality and melding it together. What are some of the common mistakes are common things that you see when you go into businesses that you need to teach management or, [00:14:00] leaders in the businesses.that they commonly have wrong?
Carl Lubbe: It's a fantastic question. So kudos on a great question. which is obviously one of my favorite things. And it's also, I think, one of the highest compliments we can pay to another human. So let me pay you that compliment. But that is a great question.
Carl Lubbe: And it's the reason I think that it's so good. It's because it's literally now my life's work that I think there's seven common problems. For leadership and culture and human relationship inside businesses, because it's the same seven problems outside business. And one of the common reactions that I'll get from executives and middle management is after I'm coaching them for a season, they'll tell me a story about their spouse or their kids or their parents.
Carl Lubbe: And they're like, you know, it's really funny. I used one of those tools that we used inside our team. I used it at home and it worked. And I'm like, Yeah, because it's all people. And so the seven that we commonly help with are, conflict resolution. Expectation management, people development, which really consists [00:15:00] of onboarding and skill building, those sorts of things.
Carl Lubbe: How do you replicate yourself? The next one would be clear language. Then we talk about ideation, which moves ideas to implementation. then we're talking about leadership development and then purpose alignment. And that's where we start. What is the purpose of the company as a whole? What is the purpose of this particular role or responsibility? And how is that connected to the problem that the company solving for each other and for the client?
Carl Lubbe: And so when you can do that with every single role and responsibility, it's this wild thing that happens that people, when they're attached to their purpose will stay much longer than when they're only attached to their pay purpose, keeps you around. Exponentially longer than pay does we require pay?
Carl Lubbe: That's a baseline. if your culture isn't paying people at market rate, I probably wouldn't be working with you because. You're not doing the basics right, but people imagine that pay will keep somebody around. Oh, [00:16:00] let me give them an extra 2 an hour. Let me give them an extra 20k a year. Let me give them this bonus structure.
Carl Lubbe: All are great for Incentivizing in short bursts, but I call this the new car syndrome when you buy a new car You like the new smell you like the way it feels for about 90 days and then after that it wears off and you feel entitled to that car Because it's yours now. It's the same thing with our pay. A raise, an increase, that's not just keeping with the market that says, hey, I value you, only holds its value for about 90 days.
Carl Lubbe: And then the brain does this interesting thing where it goes, I always deserve that. You only did what I deserve. So it can keep you connected. Pay will keep you connected for that 90 day space. Purpose will keep you connected infinitely. Because if you wake up and you go, not only am I paid well. And I'm connected to the problem that I feel like I have some sense of accomplishment in solving day in and day out.
Carl Lubbe: So that's the first place we start is, does the company or the brand understand the problem it's [00:17:00] solving? Is the brand and the purpose connected to that? Is everybody clear on what that is? Not only for the organization, but for their individual role and responsibilities. And then based on that clarity, the next place we typically go is expectation setting.
Carl Lubbe: And the line that I use for this is, all bitterness and resentment. is the direct result of unmet expectations. So this is true again of us and our significant others, our kids, our parents, our friends, our culture. When An expectation that we have of the world goes unmet.
Carl Lubbe: We become first resentful and then eventually bitter. We see this sometimes with our greatest generation, or our boomers, or our Gen Xers, or our Millennials, or our Gen, Alpha, or Z and then Alpha. If they're looking at the expectation of the world and when it goes unmet, I resent a different generation or I resent the construct.
Carl Lubbe: And then if I sit with my own resentment long enough or I find an echo chamber that will reiterate that, what do I eventually become? I become this bitter older person who goes, either the world has passed me by or the [00:18:00] world isn't the world I remember or it should be. And because that expectation went unprocessed, now I'm upset.
Carl Lubbe: So you take that really macro idea, I know we're getting a little philosophical there, into the everyday micro idea of you and I working together. Say you hire me at your great firm, and I go, Okay, the pay is set, I know where my parking spot is, I know where my cubicle is, and then I sit down at my desk and go, What's the win today?
Carl Lubbe: If I don't know what the win is, you have an expectation of the win, and I have a projected idea of the win, but if those things aren't clear and doable, matched and met, then all of a sudden it's oh, we're going to start to have some resentment. going to perform at the level you want to, and I'm going to resent you onboarded me better.
Carl Lubbe: And so then we go, we take that tool of expectation management then goes into the onboarding and people development tool so that we can have that thing, which then leads into clear language of how those [00:19:00] things don't get muddled in translation and so on and on. So all of these seven tools work together to make sure that leadership is going okay from purpose to expectation, to people development, to clear language, to conflict that's going to naturally arise.
Carl Lubbe: How do we have a tool that's going to help us mitigate and improve? And become the sort of place where my goal and our stated goal at curiosity coaches, we make happy companies. it's not a guarantee. It's not a promise. It's just what we do. If we're involved, we're going to increase clarity and reduce anxiety.
Carl Lubbe: And which will make you happier in the work that you're doing. If we can connect all seven of these things inside the company, those things naturally happen. Happiness is the by-product of a reduction in anxiety and an increase in clarity.
Paden Squires: You know,it's all fantastic stuff. you talk about setting expectations and.
Paden Squires: I think you're right. Almost every problem either comes from a lack of communication or just [00:20:00] flat out miscommunication where, I may use a word, but your interpretation of that word, even though we're saying the same word, we have very different ideas of what that word means.
Paden Squires: And, man. So much of man's problems comes from that lack of communication or just speaking two different languages. We may be speaking, both speaking English today, but two different, literally two different
Carl Lubbe: languages. Yeah. And, coming from a country with a really beautiful and really difficult past like South Africa, we see this all the time, right?
Carl Lubbe: We have half a dozen, official languages. We have dozens of recognized languages. There are hundreds of dialects. And growing up, you could context switch in a language within the course of a conversation between English and Afrikaans Shona and Ndebele. And then, you're growing out and Southern Africa, and then you've got Swahili, and so it's this thing that you've got this constant sense of context switching, and I think that also that [00:21:00] environment helped me realize if you're not the most interested person in the conversation, or you're leaning in and being curious, you will very quickly become uninteresting to the other person, because you have to be interested in order to be interesting.
Carl Lubbe: And that interest in the other person and learning their language and learning in and being curious and asking questions immediately lowers barriers like This is one of the things that I experience when I travel people especially coming from the states to a place like france So america has a lot of preconceptions about the french Oh, they're rude and they're this and that and it's so funny I've been to france a few times and as long as I start the conversation with bonjour.
Carl Lubbe: polyvore anglais It's this attempt to be in their culture, to speak their language, to apologize that I don't speak it fluently. I have never encountered a rude French person. And it's, I think it's this intent, it's this interest in their culture, it's this desire to be curious, to make that, cross that language barrier.
Carl Lubbe: And it's the same thing in the book. The thing that I would encourage [00:22:00] anybody watching this, or listening to, in their own relationships, whether it be personal or professional. is to go, when is the last time I showed genuine interest in somebody I was having conflict with? When's the last time I showed genuine curiosity?
Carl Lubbe: And one of my favorite questions around this is, when's the last time you changed your mind about something important?
Paden Squires: Ouch. You know,you really go back and, you look at that and I think, all those, you do some of that internal work on some of those things. It takes a certain level of humility.
Paden Squires: to say, you know what, my experiences, my culture, everything I've gone through in my life, maybe isn't a 100 percent representation of how the entire world works. Imagine
Carl Lubbe: That, right? Yeah, isn't that amazing, right? So
Paden Squires: it's, but it has gotten so much tougher these days. social media and different things have created, maybe have made that problem worse.
Paden Squires: Oh yeah, for sure. [00:23:00] we get in, we get on our social media, we get into these algorithms and they're just going to show you what you already believe to confirm it even further. What are your thoughts on that? I guess
So I think technology is incredibly powerful.
Carl Lubbe: I think what we have is a tool like anything else. So I like social media too. A scalpel in the right room in the hands of the right person can save your life. A scalpel in a back alley with an untrained human who is afraid can make you bleed out. And so I don't necessarily look at the technology and its function as necessarily evil.
Carl Lubbe: there's a famous verse in the Bible that's used incorrectly all the time. It's like money is the root of all evil. That's not true. The full phrase is that the love of money is the root of all evil because we've given our affection to the wrong thing. I think the same thing is true of social media, and of the technology that provides it.
Carl Lubbe: If I'm there to [00:24:00] create, and I'm there to disseminate curiosity, it's incredibly powerful. I mean, think about this. In my lifetime, previous to the internet and social media, if I had a really interesting thought, about how curiosity could improve your marriage and your parenting and your business and your relationships.
Carl Lubbe: I could maybe tell 500 people in the course of my life in a sit down conversation. I can now shed that idea and share it to millions of people with a click of a button who are in a space to hear it. And so I think the problem with social media and even when we demonize it is going, Oh, well, it's all bad.
Carl Lubbe: If it is bad, that's fine. So unplug from the pets that are unhealthy for you or your family or your community. And then start to think more about creation than consumption. If I want more beautiful things in the world, let me make art. Let me make a beautiful conversation. Let me have an interesting idea as opposed to I'm just here consuming somebody else's [00:25:00] creation.
Carl Lubbe: Cause I will say this. the designers of things like Google have come out in the last year and go, Oh, we figured out psychologically that the quickest way to get you to click, to remain connected is through outrage. And so the quickest way for you to be outraged is. How do we make you afraid of what you're going to lose and the destruction of the thing that you expect it to be there, right?
Carl Lubbe: It's going back to that expectation conversation. So anytime I feel something online trying to clickbait me, trying to make me outraged, trying me to paint any other human on the planet as the other, as across the line from me, as in opposition to me, I'm like, Oh. Oh, you're selling something there's something behind this.
Carl Lubbe: There's money being changed. And I'm like, Oh, I don't need to consume that. And I just mute whatever that channel is or whatever that thread is. And I think this is going to be the important skill set of the 21st century. curation of what you're consuming. And at this [00:26:00] point, I look a little bit like these are the early days of the Wild West, where everybody could have a gun and there was no consequence.
Carl Lubbe: Or the early days when you could smoke in a plane or in a restaurant. I'm old enough to remember I worked in restaurants in the States where I worked in the smoking section. We smoked inside around babies and other humans. Our kids would look at that and be like, are you insane? I think we'll look at social media very much the same way in the next 20 or 30 years of going. Oh, there was no curation. There was just consumption.
Carl Lubbe: We didn't have any guardrails. And I'm not talking about guardrails for Oh, we're going to decide what information we're allowing in. It's just going,no. We're going to have a more mature thing and go, Oh, I'm going to do this for 45 minutes a day, as opposed to just five and a half hours.
Carl Lubbe: Okay. We're going to create these guardrails and also we're going to go. Is it good for me? Is this something where I walk away feeling better? That's one of the first things. So here's some free coaching that other people pay for. One of the first things [00:27:00] I ask executives is to name their frustration outside of work.
Carl Lubbe: What's a life thing that currently, if I talked about it, you could get on your soapbox about it for 45 minutes. Okay, so they pretty quickly come to something and it's an election year So it's probably about this political party or that party and then I'll ask them On average a week.
Carl Lubbe: How much time would you say you consume content around this frustration? Okay So maybe we're at an hour's drive into work and an hour's drive out that i'm listening to news radio aimed at You know supporting my political party and devaluing the other one. Okay, great. Now your first exercise if you want to make an extra hundred thousand dollars this quarter I want you to turn off the radio, put the drive in and the drive out and every single time they come back and say You know what?
Carl Lubbe: It's so interesting. I'm finding myself less frustrated and I was like guess what? Here's how you're making that 100, 000. I promised every worker that you're with every colleague that you encounter the week after you turn the radio off is getting a better [00:28:00] version of you, which is creating a better version of them, which is creating a better version of your product.
Carl Lubbe: There's your 100, 000 in a blink.
Paden Squires: Yeah, I can speak to that exact situation, not that I wish I would have had you, 10 years ago, tell me to do that. but I used to do a lot of that, listening to the news and different kind of talking heads.
Paden Squires: But, I cut that out of my life like four years ago and never look back and it is true that, when you're in the middle of it, anything you pay attention to or give focus to becomes the most important thing to you, right? But if you start giving your attention to somewhere else and not feeding that, you realize, wow, that really isn't that important to my day to day life, right?
Paden Squires: and getting out of that constant state of fear and frustration, and really just like scarcity, right? You almost come out of a poisonous cloud. I like to call them, the whole spectrum of the media is just there to grab your attention. And regardless of what's going on.
Carl Lubbe: Yeah, [00:29:00] and the greatest trick now that has been pulled over us as a human population is that there's a separation now between the media and The populace. You are a media channel. I am a media channel, right? And so now we don't have just CNN or Fox or BBC or whatever. We've got three billion people with internet access who are their own little media outlet putting this out in their own little niche of the world.
Carl Lubbe: And so it is this thing to go, Oh, have I assigned blame to some big, bad unknown out there where it really is, it's just our human condition to be afraid and to make scared decisions out of a place of scarcity. And so I think, it was really wise of you, however many years ago to be like, okay, let me unplug from that and decide what it is that I would like to consume and what it is I'd like to create.
Carl Lubbe: And these things are really powerful personal decisions that affect our relationships with our significant others, our kids, and our friends, and our businesses. And so these are important questions to be asking. [00:30:00] What am I consuming? And what am I creating? And are the things that I'm worth creating, or the things I'm reposting and sharing with the world, are they things that I would look at in 20 years and be really excited that I expended energy and asked for other people's attention to be interested in this?
Carl Lubbe: Like you and I. What I've really enjoyed in the last six months is I love the fact that sports exist. I love the fact that you get to cheer on Mizzou and the Chiefs. I love the fact that I get to cheer on the Georgia Bulldogs because I found community in it through my family when, that was not a part of my upbringing.
Carl Lubbe: And when I got married, I got, basically in lawed into this Georgia Bulldog thing. And what I love about the sport is it gives you and I a chance to connect as opposed to, disconnect. Because we were going, Hey, I love that you've got your fan base and I've got mine. How do I appreciate yours?
Carl Lubbe: How do you appreciate mine? And created a moment of connectivity and curiosity about, man, I'd love to play a game with you and see the Chiefs play or see the Tigers play. so that we share an experience [00:31:00] together on this mutually agreed upon interest. And in 20 years from now, A picture when you and I eventually go to a sporting event together is worth looking back on in 20 years and go, that was worth it.
Carl Lubbe: Is very different than a guy yelling about new NIL deals that are destroying college football and all these young kids should just be more appreciative. Were you curious or were you judging? And in that moment, I don't think that tweet, that Facebook post, that Instagram reel will hold up in 20 years because it wasn't worth creating in the world.
Paden Squires: That's so good. You look back and, like a program like Facebook or whatever, they have the memories, And I think anybody that goes through those things and looks back at stuff that you posted 10 years ago or five years ago, and if you're not cringy, you probably haven't developed too much.
Paden Squires: exactly. and, and I get sucked into it too. there's times where it's like. I legitimately will post something and then 10 minutes later, I'm like, what good is that? and literally go back and delete it. Which is great. and it's [00:32:00] just really, wanting to be, just something that moves the conversation forward.
Paden Squires: And like you say, ask great questions. Trying to curate and create information and put that kind of stuff out.
Carl Lubbe: Yeah, and I think there are people who are just so good at this that it's easy to learn from them You know you and i've got this mutual buddy chas and i'm constantly amazed and impressed by the level of Question that he's asking in social media places and the amount of conversation that he's able to generate from that thing And so one of the things I would encourage your audience to do is You may not be naturally curious because it's a muscle.
Carl Lubbe: but you want to treat it the same way of going, Oh, I can lift a little bit today. It's going to be a little stronger tomorrow. And the environment matters. Who are the people in your life who you feel so seen or cared for when you're around them?
Carl Lubbe: Guess what? It's because they ask great questions. And so learn from those people, start to identify whether it's in person or on social media, who [00:33:00] are people that you really feel just ask great questions and care about sitting around for the answers in the conversation. And then start to go, well, what are they doing?
Carl Lubbe: How could I learn from them? Like, I might not be able to, you know, throw up 225 on bench with Paden first day because he's strong and he's been doing this for a while. What would it look like for me to go? I'll start with two dumbbells at 10 pounds and feel stupid, but I'm in the room learning from somebody else who's stronger than I am because it's a valuable discipline.
Carl Lubbe: It's a valuable muscle and superpower to develop.
Paden Squires: That's yeah, that's good stuff. And having the humility to just sit at the feet of someone that's further down the line and willing to just soak in. the good stuff and realize maybe the stuff that you don't want to soak in that ability, like you said, the skill going in maybe into the future is the ability to.
Paden Squires: Just filter good from bad and a lot of situation because so much is going to be thrown at you through social media and all these different channels
Carl Lubbe: it's also recognizing nobody, even people you love.
Carl Lubbe: So if there's a [00:34:00] content creator or a thought leader or a public figure that you love, because I hope for you and your podcast that, it'll get you a great big audience and people will come and listen to it. Paden's not going to say things that you agree with all the time, but that's not your job.
Carl Lubbe: The job is to like to share something. And like you said, Paden's growing all the time and looking back on the first podcast and being like, Oh, I don't know if I'd say it like that because you've grown as a human, right? Our job in those human interactions is to look for the nuance and go. I can take this great piece of truth, but then Carl said something really stupid on this podcast I completely disagree with.
Carl Lubbe: But I can still hold this truth and cast the other one aside. And it doesn't make Carl good or bad. It doesn't make Payton good or bad. Life doesn't work like that. There's nuance, there's intricacies, there's these spaces of gray. And what we have to become better at is going, how do I not throw the baby out with a bathwater?
Carl Lubbe: How do I get something great that's applicable for me and then not deify this person so that I have to defend them to other people? But also not [00:35:00] demonize them and go, Oh, you said that one dumb thing. I can never listen to any truth from you ever again. And this is what again, will make us better spouses and parents and community leaders and business leaders.
Carl Lubbe: I'm not looking at anybody as good or bad. I'm looking to be interested, ask a great question, learn what I can learn from this person, give as much value as I can, and then understand that we're just a messy mix of things, all the time. And that's okay.
Paden Squires: and my wording to sum that up is just to be, like you say all the time, be curious, ask great questions.
Paden Squires: And the only way you can do that is have a level of humility and realize while you are God's gift to the planet, you're not always right. So be, being willing to have that open mind and that all comes back to what you teach of curiosity and asking great questions. Yeah. So Carl, what's the best way people can connect with you?
Paden Squires: They like what you hear. You're obviously an impressive guy. you've worked with tons of great companies and, Your skill set in these areas is
Carl Lubbe: [00:36:00] amazing. Oh, I appreciate it. Yeah, the ways that I help these days is I help, like we talked about with executive coaching, and team development.
Carl Lubbe: So people can bring me in either for speaking engagement or they can bring me in for a one day discovery retreat session with their team. Or I can continue coaching remotely because I do all of my coaching, via one hour video calls. Each week over 90 day engagement and they can get more information on all that stuff at get more curious dot com
Paden Squires: Guys, this was an awesome episode.
Paden Squires: I thank Carl for coming on today. we'll see you next time
Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you found it valuable, please rate, review, and share it. That is the best way to help us build this and reach more people, as we're trying to accomplish our goal of help create more healthy, wealthy, and wise entrepreneurs. You can follow us on social media by searching for me @padensquires or padenquires.com on the website and social media, we're always sharing tips of personal growth, and there we [00:37:00] can actually interact. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks guys.
