The Executive Coach to Real Life Rock Stars and host of The Energy Detox Podcast, Joe Sinnott, Witting Partners, helps host Jason Spiess through a podcast of love. Sinnott and Spiess discuss how show the love at work, at home and to yourself.
The two also discuss why you love your work or your employees. It might not be why you think.
In your personal life, did your relationship enter the next chapter because it made financial sense? As Spiess points out what Billy Joel was trying to teach us all in “Scenes from Italian Restaurant.”
“When two people move in today or get married because it makes ‘financial sense’, they need to listen to Billy Joel,” Spiess said. “They started to fight when the Money got tight. And they just didn’t count on the tears. Whoa-oh-oh-oh. Whooooah-o.”
Sinnott asks Spiess a number of questions regarding the true intention of why he is working, why he is in relationship and why he loves this podcast.
Witting Partners delivers a full range of energy-focused leadership development services to help companies overcome the unique challenges of today’s oil & gas industry so that they can successfully regain and sustain peak performance.
From one-on-one executive coaching to group training programs to powerful speaking engagements, everything Witting Partners offers reflects an unmatched blend of industry insight, technical know-how, and relevant experience that has produced consistent results from the Gulf of Mexico to Appalachia, from service company to operator, and from drilling rig to downtown boardroom.
Below is the raw, unedited transcript from our artificial intelligence translator.
Jason Spiess
Let’s head over to the zoom line where we have the executive coach for the real life rock stars. Mr joe Senate who also is the host of the energy detox podcast, but day job winning partners where he is the executive coach for the real life rock stars and joe I I was having a conversation the other day with a few people and I thought this would be a fun podcast title since uh it’s the month of february and valentine’s day is just right around the corner.
Is what if this podcast today was just powered by love? What are some of those areas that we can insert love into people’s lives or or their lifestyles that maybe can help them get an extra little perk around the office around their life, around the house at E S. G. University, we started tracking layoffs. Holy Anna. There has been layoffs since the beginning of the year and we’re talking about percentage of companies employees, layoffs.
We’re not talking about bob that shows up every day for work or Jason who spends too much time in the bathroom. No, we’re talking about like how I threw myself under the bus there, joe. It’s about the love today. How you doing?
Joe Sinnott
It’s a lovely day here in Pittsburgh. Not as lovely as the last couple of days where it felt like spring, but uh, so besides a little bit of confusion on what season we’re actually in. It is all good here in Southwestern pennsylvania.
Jason Spiess
Now, I don’t want to give away any secrets of my sauce, but generally I do not like to do timely type of questions with my interviews because I tend to like to have interviews that can transcend time that can really transcend borders, that we try to connect on things that are universal with the average person.
And right now joe you are in a state with one of the most universal topics going on across the world and that is the Super Bowl. You’re in pennsylvania, you’re a stone’s throw from, well, pretty far
Joe Sinnott
stone’s throw from
Jason Spiess
philadelphia. I mean you’re over that mountain throw of philadelphia. You’re on the gorgeous side of Pittsburgh,
Joe Sinnott
I mean it’s pretty much just one road Jason, I mean it’s just just hop on the pennsylvania turnpike and next thing you know, you’re in Phil so I, I’ve
Jason Spiess
driven it and I’ve done, you probably don’t know this, but I’ve done a half a dozen magazines in Pittsburgh. I didn’t want in Washington, which is, I believe just southeast of you. Is that right? …
Joe Sinnott
We
Jason Spiess
did one in um eastern pennsylvania as well. We did one up in the Wilksbehr country as well. Um, I think that’s matt Dillon’s old stomping grounds and also state college p a when lavar Arrington was finishing up school. So I gotta watch lavar Arrington comeback when he was a Washington Redskin and play some skin and shirts ball over there at happy Valley and boy, I tell you what penn state people can talk about what they want about the football and basketball and everything else that
is a gorgeous campus. That is like, one of my favorite campuses in the entire United States, all the trees and just that Nice Valley. But um, what’s going on with the Super Bowl talk? What’s happening in your state? What’s, what’s going on? We might as well get an update as long as we’re there. Right.
Joe Sinnott
Sure. Well, I don’t know if I can represent the chatter that’s going on on the eastern side of the state in philadelphia. But uh, here in Pittsburgh at least, you know, where there’s actually some attention on the pirates believe it or not. So typically this time of year, you know, people are still coming off of a successful Steelers season, which was not necessarily the case and looking ahead to next dealer season.
But uh, in terms of sports Jason, these Pirates are actually bringing back Andrew McCutchen who was homegrown talent homegrown in terms of coming up through their system. At least I think he’s actually from florida, but anyway, he is aging, but they decided to bring him back again depends who you ask actually doesn’t depend who you ask. I think everybody says it’s more for gimmick reasons. But uh, so it’s interesting to see Some chatter about the pirates, not because anybody
expects them to actually be competitive or win more than 60 games this year. But mainly because they, yeah, they’re bringing back, uh, you know, former all star and certainly a fan favorite to try to juice some interest in the team. So I know shifted quickly away from football, but again, we’re 300 miles away from Philadelphia. So we’re
Jason Spiess
you’re talking about where the love is coming from Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh. Apparently there’s not enough brotherly love to make it all the way to philadelphia and that’s okay. And we, you know, we can’t afford sound effects quite at this show. So we make our own up. But that’s the kind of fun we have here. Now. The whole idea about this podcast powered by Love actually came from a electric vehicle owner because they were finding out some of the realities about these electric
vehicles uh sometimes they take a little longer to charge than most. And of course that kevin Bacon Ad came on and that’s what sparks the conversation. And uh the comment was made that maybe we should just make a vehicle that’s powered by love. And I thought boy, that’s a pretty good line, I’m gonna use that going forward.
So here we are today, joe what kind of world can you power by love today? I brought the E. V. Vehicle. If we can just all get along maybe our cars will power themselves. What do you think about that?
Joe Sinnott
I think that any appearance on the Crew life is is magical and you never know where we’re going to go. So powered by love. I mean, I guess you said a couple minutes ago that you strive for more universal and timeless topics. I suppose there’s nothing more universal and timeless than the topic of love uh, in terms of its ability to power anything.
Well, I mean, I guess you could argue that there are people out there who think that their vehicles are powered by the electric vehicles are powered by magic and it’s magic when they turn on their light switch and don’t know the realities of things. So I guess kind of shifting back to our normal strain of conversation about leadership. It is a question of actually understanding the facts.
So, you know, even love as vague as it can be and as soft and fluffy as it could be. You know, at the end of the day, there are still very real rules that determine how love works and how sustainable love is and whether it’s actually gonna be able to fuel a relationship for any period of time or whether it’s just uh, you know, some fleeting passion or some feelings and obviously when it comes to energy and the things that actually power our lives, there’s a lot of feelings out there,
there’s a lot of emotion, but again, at the end of the day, a lot of them are fleeting. So with that Jason, I don’t even know if I answered your question, I don’t know what your question was, but uh, there’s my, my attempt to connect the world of energy and love and some of that figurative fuel that keeps people going, whether their leaders or corporations or whatever the case is
Jason Spiess
figurative fuel. I like that a lot figurative fuel because one of the things that I was just thinking about is, you know, when you’re working for an organization, you know, if you have a very good organization, a lot of times people stay there. So what you could say is that if you have an organization that really does convey a message of love, I would imagine you’d probably have a place that people would love to work at right Well in your personal life, this is a true story.
This was a conversation we had around the new year with a couple of people that were going through a divorce, they were getting divorced because the, as Bill Billy Joel sings the money got tight and we just didn’t count on the tears from scenes from an italian restaurant great song. It’s three songs. It’s three different songs and one actually, it’s like a meatloaf song.
Every meatloaf song you get three for one in every song. You know, it’s just great. You get three different melodies that makes Billy Joel did. That was scenes from an italian restaurant. Anyway point is that we were talking about this divorce and with some people and I made the unfortunate comment of sticking my foot in my mouth like I normally do and I just said to my buddy, I said, hey I remember when the two of you got together seven years ago you said it made sense financially.
You said that you moved in together because you wanted to share bills, You said that you got married because it made financial sense and now since the money got tight and you just didn’t count on the tears, oh whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, now you’re getting a divorce, you see how that makes sense.
So if you can have a relationship that is figuratively fueled by love, then a lot of these uh fights that Billy Joel talks about these things about just don’t happen. Mr joe senate I see where that can work at work and in your home life. But what do you think of that?
Joe Sinnott
Well I guess a couple of things from starting on the work side, yes. You know, companies might talk about love, maybe not use that word. Certainly companies talk about having familial atmospheres and such, but you know that can be dangerous and you know, you see chatter out there, I think Colin mcclelland of digital wildcatters fame. He had a post a week or so ago basically warning against companies that talk about, you know, we are a family and again you could argue one way or the
other, but one thing I think is is absolutely clear is that you need to be aware of situations where people are talking about unconditional love because unconditional love again is great in a true family, but it could be disastrous and certainly unsustainable in the corporate world. Yet a lot of managers, a lot of leaders, they get to the point unconsciously where they are in this unconditional love situation where they’re not seeing whether they are choosing to not see or
they’re just completely unaware of the things that are toxic that are hurting their odds of success that are damaging their company and you know, when they refuse to see those things and when they refuse to see those problems out of whatever you wanna call it love or or or something, again, more difficult to define, it’s disastrous. So coming back to the world that I live in and then I work in, it all comes down to being conscious of one the threats to a sustained relationship if you
will, and to being very intentional about why you have this relationship in the first place. So, to your story there, if your relationship is founded upon a financial agreement and then things inevitably change, well, shouldn’t be a surprise if you know that relationship doesn’t exist anymore. And … well, I mean in the world that I live in now, you know, in the coaching world, you know, a lot of people don’t like what I share.
You know, again, again, I’m not sharing my opinions, I’m sharing my observations, I’m sharing what I see, I’m sharing the facts, I’m sharing what I hear and again, that could be difficult at times, but
Jason Spiess
people might think, you know that oh we’re getting a little personal with people’s lives because we’re talking about their marriage and this and that. But no, actually it’s the same thing about a job. A lot of people there with their job because of the financial arrangement. That’s, that’s the whole reason, whether they love their job or not is a whole different conversation.
But when you’re agreeing with yourself that I’m gonna wake up next to somebody every day or I’m gonna go and go to this place every single day. You’re making an agreement with yourself and with someone someone else and you should love it. And the comment about unconditional love, here’s what I like to tell people whenever that word comes up because that is a word that was starting to get thrown around way too much for what it is.
I mean unconditional love. There’s very few people who actually can do that, but one who did is forrest gump when you’re ready to let the love of your life leave and go and screw up in the world and come back and use you and leave and come back and use you and come back and use you and in the end stay with you because that’s what forrest did forrest gump provided unconditional love for jenny so she could go out and screw up in the world, but she always had her forrest gump pad to go back
recharge, get that love that unconditional love that forest knew how to give and so that’s the example I like to give with for unconditional love. So um, we went on a little bit off the rail there, but I wanted to just add that in. So go ahead, joe take over from there. Yeah,
Joe Sinnott
well, I mean, even on, you know, the forest gump situation or uh, you know, and again, any marriage or relationship, is it a choice? That’s, that’s what it comes down to. You know, it was for making the choice to stick with jenny no matter what. And you know, as a husband or wife, are you making that choice to love your spouse no matter what? And as an employee, are you making the choice?
The conscious choice to stay at that company or do you feel stuck? You know, are you, are you just going through the motions and you don’t actually know why you’re there because again, that’s not sustainable if you’re making that conscious decision to be at that company for a whole host of reasons and you’re honest with yourself, that’s a very different situation than just kind of going through the motions and showing up and yeah, it pays the bills, whatever. You know, that’s,
you don’t want, if you’re the company, you don’t want a bunch of people who are not actively choosing to be there each and every day or who feel stuck stuck in a relationship. So, again, I think it comes down to making a choice and being conscious about it, which again, is the crux of what I do. So whether it’s on the personal side of the professional side, it’s about being intentional with your time, with your energy, with your money, in some cases, choosing to
Jason Spiess
do
Joe Sinnott
something and do it the right way, choosing to love someone, no matter what, and again, when people aren’t even aware that they’re making that choice or they’re just sliding back and forth unconsciously, that’s when they’re setting themselves up for failure. So, you know, to your point again, are we talking about people’s personal lives here?
Well, yes and no, but it’s all the same stuff, Jason, it’s about being intentional and conscious about what your ultimate purpose is, and heck, I’ll throw another thing in there, you know, hey, we’re talking about personal lives, we’re talking about love. You can even bring in a religious or, you know, uh theological element to this because one definition of love.
One definition of marriage that I heard several years ago was as a spouse, your job is to help get your spouse and the rest of your family if you have kids to heaven and again, regardless of you know, where people are at where your audience is at, in terms of that, I think about that for a moment, you have an ultimate mission and everything you’re doing each and every day regardless of your feelings is to help move that other party closer to some ultimate destination and that, you know,
situation or that description that being heaven. Think about that now, bring it back to your personal lives. Your professional lives is every action you’re taking, consciously moving you towards some ultimate destination. That that’s powerful. That’s a relationship that is more than just feelings, that’s consciousness.
And again, in a in a marriage, especially if you don’t have that level of commitment and awareness and intentionality, you’re setting yourself up for disaster. And it’s not much different when we’re talking about professional lives and careers
Jason Spiess
bring up a great point about sustainable love if you will, because, you know, it’s sustainable love is unconditional love, very difficult to achieve. Very difficult. Even for married people. Very difficult. That’s why divorce is over 50%. So when we take a look at how love is blind, whether it’s idol worshiping your your position, you know, your job, which a lot of times people love their job, but again, when the finances aren’t there or maybe they’re not getting the vacation
time or maybe the somewhat related to, you know, this finance stuff isn’t working out, they don’t love their job anymore. And on the flip side, maybe there’s some managers where love is blind because they might love this employee, but really they only like what the employee does for them, they don’t really care about the employee or the company.
They just like that the employee gives them time. So they can have a four hour lunch. That’s why they love the employee. So there’s different ways that people can love their job too. So talk to me a little bit about love is blind because a lot of times people throw around that word and they really don’t understand what it means to themselves.
Joe Sinnott
Yeah, again, it comes back to the same theme of being conscious and being aware, being winning. Again, we’ll throw a nod to my company name, right? It’s being a winning conscious partner to in the case you just mentioned an employee and part of that level of consciousness is being on the same page. If, if that relationship is purely transactional and it’s, hey, I employ you and I pay you and you make my life easier and I compensate you, you know, commensurate with that, you know,
level of value that you bring to the company and to myself, then fine. At least we get it out there. We’re not beating around the bush and pretending like there’s more to that relationship. But if you’re not open and transparent and whatever cliche word you want to use their about the dynamic of that relationship, whether it leans more towards transactional or whether it means leans more towards, you know, something deeper this, you know, again, like the deeper relationship
that should be between a husband and a wife. If you can’t put words to that, you can’t speak to. What type of relationship we have then? I mean, that’s a level of blindness that’s gonna lead all parties in, you know, some unfavorable direction Jason. So, again, it’s this not to beat a dead horse here, but it all comes down to just being conscious and aware of what the relationship is and what it’s supposed to look like
and what its ultimate purpose is. What is the purpose of a contractual relationship between employer employee and what’s the purpose of a relationship between spouses?
Jason Spiess
Excuse me. Here, I swallow coffee there for a second. Sometimes it’s hot, coffee gets a little hot and a hiccup,
Joe Sinnott
hot and hot and heavy episode of the crude life here in the middle of february. There, there we go.
Jason Spiess
Right, alright, so let’s talk about the love of your job and just the love of your family and why you do things because a lot of people, they either love their job or they love their family, and that’s why they go to work. But some people, they go to work because they’re afraid of what happens if they don’t pay their bills.
So maybe their intention isn’t so much love as it is fear. How can we get people to change their perspective so that when they wake up in the morning, they’re not really feeling fearful to start their day, but they’re actually embracing some of these joyful things that the day can bring. Does that make sense, joe?
Joe Sinnott
It does, I mean it brings up a couple, I guess maybe follow up questions I have for you in terms of what you mean there.
Jason Spiess
But uh you
Joe Sinnott
know, the first thing is, you know, does it really matter if people are going to work passionate and joyful about what they’re doing? Because
Jason Spiess
well,
Joe Sinnott
so again and again, I think you could, you can argue back and forth, I would say no matter what the first step is to be honest about the realities of things, you know, not not going in pretending like you’re doing what you’re doing when you don’t really do it or or vice versa, right? You know, pretending like this is drudgery when you know what you actually enjoy your, your 45 minute commute and the time by yourself and you actually enjoy that coffee break.
You actually enjoy interacting with people. But for for whatever reason you’re afraid to admit it because you know, you’ve you set this story for whoever else, maybe your spouse, Oh yeah, I’m going to work, you know, working, working for you, working for the family. Oh, another tough day where I actually only put in about, you know, 45 minutes of actual work and the other, you know, six or seven hours was actually just uh alone time or or Bs time or whatever.
So again, it comes down to first being honest with yourself about like, do I really hate this, or do I really like this, Jason and then you can talk about practical ways and tips and tricks to, to maybe enhance your enjoyment, but the first step is, hey, are you telling, have you created this darn story one way or the other?
That is unnecessary. Whether again it’s it’s, I’m passionate about my job or I’m not passionate, stop using those words if they don’t actually mean anything, and let’s get back to the facts of what you really do, truly enjoy and what you do enjoy and and quit this narrative. So I’ll stop there. I don’t know if,
Jason Spiess
you know, well, because sometimes for me, I find myself when I was, you know, it’s supporting my family and doing everything like that, it’s pretty easy to get caught up in the, in the love of the chase. You know, you’re chasing the money, you’re chasing the goal, you’re chasing the goal, you know, whatever it might be. And so it can actually take priority over, you know, your family at times, because in your mind, you’re thinking, you know, if I just get this taken care of, well then
the family will be fine and, you know, to me that’s more of, you know, the kind of the, not to get theological, but the money changers talking if you will, you’re trying to get your bills paid so that you can spend time with your family. So to me that’s where I personally, where I struggled was trying to get the family always ahead of paying the bills if you will and again I bring this up because just the amount of layoffs that are happening right now and the amount of people going through
an energy transition. So these money conversations are very um, uh they’re increasing quite a bit. And so what one of the reasons for the love podcast is to remember what, why are you doing this? Are you doing this for the money? Are you doing this for the love? If you’re doing it for the love, it could be for the love of your job, your trade, your family yourself a number of different things.
But if you invoke some love, install some love, embed some love into whatever it is you’re doing generally you’re not in a bad mood are you? Normally that term is supposed to mean mean put a smile on your face right
Joe Sinnott
normally, but but let me let me jump in there, Jason. I mean, even there, I mean there’s there’s general rules that that makes sense and most of the time, but especially if there’s, there’s people listening who have just gotten laid off. I’ll share. Let me share a story that I shared. Gosh, this was about a year ago, uh in a talk that I gave and it was actually during the Q and a section people were asking, well, practically speaking, you know, how do you how do you slow down and make
decisions when you feel like you’re you’re under pressure? And of course, you know, the first answer is, well, well coaching helps, right? I mean when I’m coaching people, it makes them pause. You know, it might be just for an hour out of a very busy week, but they actually need to slow down and think more clearly so that they don’t just default to the standard rules.
And the reason I’m bringing this up in terms of all these layoffs you keep talking about is that, you know, if, say you had a nice steady job and you were able to afford a nanny that helped you go to work so that, you know, your kids were taking care of, you know, that nanny was a big expense and then you lose your job and then, you know, your immediate thought as well, we can’t afford this anymore.
I gotta go look for a job, let’s let’s, you know, slim everything down again. There’s logic to that, right? Hey, you know, the income is stopping. So we need to obvious pause or look very closely at the money that’s going out the door. That’s a logical thought. However, when you slow down and you say, well, what if we actually increase the amount of support for our Children, you know, maybe not not just a nanny, but what we’ll actually have some extra babysitting time so that I can
focus on hitting the reset button and finding a new job during this period of time. Again, instead of now scrambling and making, you know, shortsighted panic decisions that might make sense, but might be hurting the long term, you know, sustainable goals that you have. That’s the type of thinking where if you can slow down and avoid just going to, you know, these default rules, you might start thinking differently and then almost go the opposite direction.
But a lot of people, Jason and this is human nature myself included, right? It’s, hey, we’re gonna go, go, we’re gonna make a quick decision, we’re gonna move forward and all else being equal. We’re just gonna go with the default approach to things and, you know, we’ll be just fine, but from a coaching standpoint being just fine or good enough, Clearly that is not, you know, that’s not my goal.
When I’m working with people. When people hire me, When companies hire me, obviously that’s not their goal. It’s to actually be more thoughtful and more conscious and more aware so that you make more sustainable and more inventive and innovative and whatever words we want to throw in their decisions that are, you know, gonna last. They’re gonna stick.
Jason Spiess
How about if you love what you do so much that you get shamed where you go. So let’s say you work in the oil and gas industry and you walk into a room and boy, you’re the new modern day leper, you’re the new cigarette. I mean you’re the person just smoking a cigarette and putting the ashes out on a baby right in the room. I’ve been in that room, by the way, people have actually, I’m serious, I’ve actually had people get up and leave because I said that you know, I do the crude life for example.
So it’s um it’s it’s a real thing. Uh how did you how do people stay with it, joe talk to me about, you know, keeping the love for yourself, keeping the love for your brotherhood, sisterhood, your comrades, comrades that you know, hey I want to have some natural gas in my life. I wanna you know, I want to be able to power my home when I at some point.
But it’s hard because there’s a lot of people not giving me the love, you know, it’s like what the farmers went through in the eighties when the grocery store took them out. Everybody loved going to the grocery store and making fun of the farmer. Well that doesn’t make any sense, but it happened. And look where we’re at with the farmers. There’s hardly any farmers left now. They’re all corporate farmers and robot farmers now they even got robot chickens.
I think I saw that, you know that was a futurama episode. See I get my my shows mixed up at times, but talk to me about how to keep the love going when you’re not getting it when you’re getting disrespected their back to the Super Bowl when you’re a J Brown and you’re getting disrespected by the titans, show me how to get some respect.
Joe Sinnott
Well, if you’re looking for respect and you’re looking to keep the love going as you just said, the worst thing you could do is default to the same stale talking points that everybody else is throwing out there. That is definitely, definitely, definitely the worst thing you can do because people hear it, you know, people are sick of it, you know, people have short attention spans, oh I heard that talking point, you know, last week, you gotta find something new.
So the answer Jason, at least in my experience and whether it’s in my personal life or again now in this coaching world is preparation. You can prepare yourself before you even engage with these people who might be, you know, again, casting you aside or inclined to, to walk the other direction. You can, you can take two minutes to just go through, you know, stream of consciousness, some questions that other people might ask, you know what might resonate in the response that you
could give to them or, you know, little tidbits that you could share with them, that again go beyond the normal talking points and you know, obviously working in oil and gas, we have our talking points and they’re great, they’re foundational, everybody should know them, but people should be sharing them in a way that is more directed at a specific audience, you know, people, for example, Jason uh you know, not to get on my soapbox here, but in oil and gas, it’s very easy to talk
about the economic benefits, the job benefits of what we do, and those are absolutely reel, but for a lot of audiences, they don’t care, they’re gonna tune out immediately because, you know, they don’t care, they’re gonna, they’re gonna have their own talking points to say, well, industries of all right, You know, if if we didn’t allow, you know, if we tried to protect the horse and buggy right, you know, we would have never evolved
just to protect those jobs, you know, you need to understand when that audience is gonna have that in their head and from what I see again, this is more of a macro thing. A lot of
Jason Spiess
people, they
Joe Sinnott
Don’t, they don’t recognize that there’s different audiences and this is obviously communication 101, but it takes an ounce of energy and and a couple of minutes of time to prepare and again, if we really want to bring it back to the to the love connection, if you will to this episode, Yeah, it’s the same thing, if you’re, if you’re coming home to your spouse and you know, there’s something you want to share, you just put it out of your mind until you show up or do you know, on the drive
home say say no uh no, I completely forgot about valentine’s day, how am I, how am I gonna frame this? You’re gonna prepare, right? Why wouldn’t you take that same preparation approach when it comes to those around you that you know, you want to listen to what you have to say, how can you get them to listen?
So maybe along with an answer there, Jason, but you know, it’s preparation, it’s slowing down. It’s the same thing we’ve talked about, you know earlier in this episode and on, you know, other conversations.
Jason Spiess
No, I love it. I love it all. Absolutely love it. … Oh, isn’t that great? Just a podcast powered by Love. I’m telling you if if I could invent an E. V. Car that’s powered by Love, I don’t think there’ll be an issue in the world again, I think everything will get taken care of. So I gentleman that I had that conversation with at that random place boy, if we get a bottle that up and sold it, we’d be uh right now,
Joe Sinnott
well, for now, for a little while, Jason as you know though, all great innovations ultimately will have their naysayers eventually. So I think again that’s another mistake that people make from a sustainability standpoint, they think that they’ve got it, they’ve got this magic answer only to be found that even if you found a car that was made entirely of love by love and and fueled with love somehow some way you’d get people out there with their pitchforks and they’re, you know,
they’re torches ready to run you out of town. So just just a warning for you again in the world that I’m in as much exuberance as people might have. They think they have a breakthrough. Part of my job is to, you know, say that’s great. But let’s build in a little insulation, a little insurance because it might not be as grand of an idea and approach as you think it is. So
Jason Spiess
no, and you know, I mean, a lot of things are cyclical and a lot of the, you know, ain’t nothing new under the sun if you will, but at the same time our lives are still our lives and we still have to wake up and we still have to be productive and we have to be stewards of whatever we’re stewards of whether it’s the land or whether it’s God or whether it’s our family or it’s um, what do, um, what it weakens the trees, the, you know, the god of the trees.
I can’t think of the week and got off top of my head. I try to include everybody’s, and sometimes I just, I, I don’t, and I apologize for those people who are left out Kwanza, for example, anyone who’s Kwanza. Um, but seeing that I kind of lose, lose track where I’m going with this joe
Joe Sinnott
there’s a lot of holidays Jason this week celebrated national pizza Day. So there’s a lot there’s
Jason Spiess
a lot of to you know and there’s a lot of religions too. So you know we try to keep the love out there as much as we can and when you don’t offer enough love out there, people get mad because you don’t give enough love. And so it’s a it’s a it’s a weird time we’re living in joe. It really is. But I do love this idea where we can take a concept and say hey listen let’s get more ridiculous than the ridiculous of hate. There’s so much polarizing profit profiting right now, you know profit wordplay
there. Use it twice, there’s so much of that going on that what if we just say what if we powered by love we’d make more money. That’s it came out of the E. S. G. Movement. What if we just powered this, bye bye bye love. Would we all be okay? And then of course that people get upset at that when you’re not angry they get they get upset. So
Joe Sinnott
um with
Jason Spiess
that, you know I I know you love feedback. So what type of feedback would you love to hear from people on something like this? Well
Joe Sinnott
I think the first thing Jason going back to what you just said? You know it’s it’s easy to laugh. Yeah what if we focused on love instead of hate and being angry and you know, again, a good portion of the population is gonna set that aside. But I think the bigger question that I would ask people and and again, I’d be curious their feedback on this. How much energy and time are you investing if you will in hate or negativity? …
Jason Spiess
Well
Joe Sinnott
then I’ll then I’ll stop and I’ll stop talking there because that’s it. That’s the question. I mean, you know, again, I I we talk a lot here. I mean, the ironic thing is Jason and my day job as a coach. My job is to actually, you know, shut up and listen and ask questions and then listen some more. Uh so you know this this I love this conversation. This gives me a chance to hop up on my soapbox a little bit. But Coming back to my day job of asking questions.
That’s the question, sit with that for a couple of minutes, 160 868 hours in the week. How many hours and it probably is hours are spent on things that don’t actually add any value. And then the next question again, were facts here. We we’ve moved beyond love and feelings. The facts are if you invested that energy and that time on something positive, … I’ll
Jason Spiess
talk about something that I did that I think other people could do and save their job right now. There’s a huge movement happening on social media, where are you spending your time? And if individuals shifted their time on social media and that’s what I did. So I took x amount of hours. I want to say it was uh was it 30 minutes a day or 45 minutes a day?
It was one of the two because I needed 15 minutes or 30 minutes to do the thing that I did. So um as you know joe I work in the media. So we have a certain amount of hours that we spend on social media, a certain amount of hours we spend creating content, Certain amount of hours we have to spend doing like sales and just administrative work type of a thing.
And when we looked at our party, our pie chart. Social media is always the one that has to get taken from first because it doesn’t generate any money and it’s where we produce the most of our time without return because sales you can get returned called sales administration, you can get a return which is keeping the I. R. S out and keeping the government out and fines and you can actually organize your business a little bit.
So there’s a return there when you look at social media and honestly, if if you don’t make it in the moment now it’s just branding. So if you don’t monetize that social media post in the moment essentially what you’re doing is branding for your company or yourself. So businesses are starting to say why is the person I’m paying to be in charge of social media tripling their followers because I’m paying for them to go to all these events.
And my company now only has four posts in the last two months, why are they not posting on my company? So what I advised the company to do was say we’ll just have your employee post on the social media through uh, the company and have them share it on their personal. And the guy goes, well, that makes sense. I said, well, that’s how you’re supposed to do it.
That’s how it was designed originally, just about shifting your energy. Well then the conversation with me was okay, can you take the half hour out of your day and do what you love to do? Well, I love to write. So if you go to the crude life right now, you’ll see that we’re doing a lot more writing now. If you go to some of the other sites that I do, I’m doing a lot more writing now because for me I can write an article over lunch really easy because I’ve interviewed experts for 30 years, so
it’s not difficult for me to recall things and remember and etc. So what I did Joe I shifted a half hour away from social media and directed it to a different media, which is writing. So therefore my companies can create more of a social media presence at the end of the day, instead of me giving the content and my energy to linkedin or facebook or so or instagram, I’m giving the energy to myself
first and then I’m gonna turn around and give my energy to the social media platforms, but only 25% of my energy is gonna go there with 100% of my product. Does that make sense?
Joe Sinnott
It all makes sense. And it all ties back to what you said at the outset of that comment, which was essentially time management and this focus on where are you investing your time? And that is one of the major themes that comes across and all the coaching that I do, and in fact Jason, the idea of time management and where are you investing your time?
And is it is it structured in the right way, the order of operations, right kind of to your point, you know, do you get your energy first and then you’re able to share that versus trying to do the grunt work while Euron energized and you know, being out of whack all of those questions, whether it’s prioritization order of operations, where your bucket in your time, that’s huge, not just for an individual who is, you know, going through coaching because their company sponsored it,
but for that same individual in his or her personal life, you know, one of the, again, most of the coaching do is under the corporate umbrella, you know, it’s people who are employed, many of them are being sponsored by their company to, you know, to gain value from coaching, that helps them as an individual employee, but also helps the bottom line of the company.
But I’ll tell you, Jason, one of the things that really impacts the personal lives of the people that I work with is when we sit down and we talk about time management and structuring an ideal week and determining when makes the most sense to focus on your wife or your husband or your Children and finding the optimal time for that instead of just trying to squeeze it in.
Because if not, it could become like social media, I’ll do a little, a little bit here, a little bit there. Oh, I got this great idea, let me pop over here, maybe this person can do that, and it becomes this, this unconscious hodgepodge of things, instead of being intentional and saying, no, no, no, I am at my best on thursday afternoons and when I’m at my best, I want to be with my family, so I’m gonna block that time.
Is it gonna happen every thursday? Absolutely not. But at least I’m gonna try, I’m gonna be intentional about it, and that’s exactly what I think you were just sharing in terms of a social media strategy and that’s why Jason the things that I work on with people, they have very practical application, especially in the energy industry, but they also apply to people’s personal lives and it’s the same approach, it’s the same mindset, it’s the same tools and again, if nothing else,
it helps strengthen relationships, which is a lot of what we’re talking about here. You know, those bonds, whether it’s love or whether it is something more transactional. The moral of the story is if you want to strengthen your connection, strengthen those relationships, you need to be intentional and you need to be smart with your time and your energy.
Jason Spiess
Now I know we’re going into overtime here because it’s the big Super Bowl edition of the Love podcast. I’m sorry, It’s the Super Bowl Edition podcast powered by Love. I got a wordsmith that a little bit. I love it. Either way. Okay, so where does your energy go first? I’m paraphrasing what you said uh where does your energy go first? That is a really important thing for every company to ask themselves right now, whether you’re you’re an employee, but mostly if you’re a business
owner or you’re a decision maker, let’s take that social media example joe that I gave for a second and this could go any way you want to go in any department, where does your energy go first. Okay, so if you’re the Department of Transportation or you’re the company that sells widgets and you got that social media manager that we talked about for an example.
Now if your energy or your money is going to that person so they can go to networking events and they’re only posting on their personal where does your energy go first? If you are paying someone to go market and brand your company and they are continuously doing it on their personal and not your company or your government page. Where does your energy go first?
In fact, I would even ask how much energy are you getting in return? That is one of the biggest issues going on right now. And it’s really hard for the average person to understand for one. They’ve never worked in the media and number two it’s just not fun when you got to change. So right now a lot of work places are making changes. I even know some places joe they’re outlawed on social media now.
I talked to one guy the other day, he called me and he said were outlawed and now we’re not even have it anymore because he did an audit and found out how much time people are spending on their personal versus their work stuff. Um So that was my example. I wrote down where does your energy go first? I think you got a book there. That’s a book right there because that csg that’s E. S. G. In a nutshell right there.
What what is the supply chain of your energy? Take a look at it and how does it come back and this isn’t like trying to be a bitter or trying to get bad or anything, this is just trying to be professional with the supply chain because joe I don’t think that the energy detox podcast has its own brand, does it? You do it all through winning partners, correct,
Joe Sinnott
correct. It’s all under the umbrella, obviously it’s its own entity on all the podcast platforms. It’s got its own domain. For
Jason Spiess
example, where does your energy go first for you? Your energy goes to the umbrella of willing partners first, correct?
Joe Sinnott
Yes and no, Jason, unless you want to get more philosophical. I mean, my energy ultimately is going through winning partners. So I guess, yeah, it goes there first, but It’s to the people, it’s to my audience. I mean, at the end, at the end of the day, Jason, you know, winning partners is not some 10,000 personal organization. So, I mean, I’ll be honest people, they’re not hiring me, you know, for winning, but they’re not hiring willing partners on paper.
They are certainly from a contractual standpoint. But at the end of the day, you know, I’m doing the coaching. They’re hiring me for my experience for my insights for the results that I’ve generated. And
Jason Spiess
so for
Joe Sinnott
that reason, my energy, I would say really doesn’t go to winning partners and when I have an opportunity to connect to an individual first, you know, somebody who already have a relationship with or you know, somebody who I know needs the type of services that I offer, that’s where I I turn to first, now again, whether I use winning partners as an avenue to to expand that connection relationship.
Yeah, that’s a different story. But in terms of where my energy goes, Jason, it’s focused on the end user, the audience, the person who’s gonna benefit from me, not some intermediate step, which again, stay on my soapbox here for a moment. That’s where a lot of companies get screwed up in their social media strategy is they forget as simple as it is, and, you know, you’ve been immediate for all these years, right?
They forget who their audience is. So that’s where your that’s where your energy needs to go first, in terms of the avenue to get there, there’s a million different ways to do that. And some of it, like you said, you know, if you have a passion for one approach to connect with that audience, fine, do what suits you best. You know, leverage the resources that you have at your disposal, that enthuse you.
But by all means don’t get stuck there because a lot of people do. And, you know, their message. Again, we’re Super Bowl’s coming up here, you know, from an advertising standpoint, you spend million dollars on an ad that, you know, people leave people scratching their heads and saying, what did I just watch? What’s that for? You know,
Jason Spiess
that’s, you
Joe Sinnott
Know, marketing 101, if you will, so audience audience audience audience audience is where my energy goes first and then if it happens to flow through winning partners or the energy detox or a conversation with you, Jason, so be it.
Jason Spiess
And yeah, thank you for making me look like a fool with the technicality of yes, you’re the independent contractor, you’re, you kind of like, yeah, everything goes through me and but I get your point and actually you bring up a good point because uh sometimes there is that person that it’s just, they need to be the identity and not necessarily have the company become their identity.
That’s a case too. And that’s actually one of my biggest things because I’ve got three or four different companies, I’m trying to juggle. So as I try to do one, I can’t have the other one, you know, mix and match because it pollutes the water if you will. It gets too confusing for people because there are a lot of people that like to just label and they like to be very singular with certain things and check boxes and, and etcetera.
But you bring up a really interesting point about that joe you do because there are some other variables that that go into this and at the end of the day, you know, where does your energy go, where do you put it, where do you put it first? And in the Super Bowl ad that you brought up, you just, that was a great little side bar there because sometimes a lot of these Super Bowl ads now, you actually have to go and watch a netflix series before.
You can even understand the ad. Like if people had never seen Wayne’s World before, imagine what that ad looked like to them. First of all, Gareth, I loved Mike Myers to death, but he looked really old and kind of creepy and scary for wearing that clothes and trying to present himself as a teenage boy from what I remember back when Wayne’s World first came out.
Great Movie, rob. Lowe, Fantastic. Okay, but 30 years, 40 years later that, that didn’t play well. But even worse, somebody made a ton of money to just basically give me a homework to go watch movies. There’s a lot of this kind of rehashing of certain things. Re energy where you grab energy from someone else and put it to you and now you’ve given people homework. Now you gotta go watch Lord of the Rings. Now you gotta go watch game of Thrones, which I’ve never seen.
So anybody that does any advertising with those two things is completely lost on me. And that’s what I see a lot of these Super Bowl ads now joe is there just kind of doing their own little micro movie of some show they liked as a kid or something like that. So anyway, that’s my comment on the Super Bowl commercials. I don’t know if that’s you want to comment on that, that’s kind of against the love podcast
Joe Sinnott
here? Well, I mean for all those corporations who love money, I’m assuming they’re they’re doing, you know, they’re they’re figuring out the rate of return on that. And if they’re doing something that’s only gonna resonate with a handful of people or that’s gonna require homework for everybody else to actually go and figure out what they’re saying.
And at the end of the day, if they figure that’s still going to give them the return they want, then, you know, so be it. But in the real world where we are communicating every single day as human beings, we need to be asking ourselves what the rate of return is on our words and our time and more importantly, the time and the attention of our audience and in a corporate environment, especially in the world of oil and gas, that’s go, go, go the leader or the manager who’s relying on, uh,
analogies that don’t hit or things that they say that people don’t understand, but they’re afraid to, you know, ask questions about because it’s go go go or they’re gonna feel stupid or whatever, which speaks in many ways to some of the generational gaps that also help, uh, companies work through. They need to ask themselves, am I being clear rule number one for communication, am I being clear and to your point, Jason, if the audience has to go and do homework or doesn’t
understand your reference to Seinfeld because, you know, they weren’t even born until 10 years, You know, after Seinfeld went off the air, You’re probably not being terribly efficient with your communication ability, even though there’s one or two people in the room who are laughing hysterically and got your point 100% and are ready to barge out.
Maybe that’s good enough, but it’s up to you as the communicator to determine whether it’s good enough and not just unconsciously keep going to the same old well of uh of analogies and whatever else to get your point
Jason Spiess
across. … Well, as much as I loved this podcast, you should probably wrap it up and I know that you like business and your family loves it when you’re making the bacon, so to speak. So how can people get in touch with you and give yourself a few plugs if you will, so that we can generate some business your way, sir?
Joe Sinnott
Well, despite saying a couple minutes ago that, you know, winning partners is really just there as a pass through the easiest way is to go to winning partners dot com. If, if you wanna connect and learn a little bit more about what I do and how I do it and the results that I’ve helped companies in the energy industry and beyond generate in terms of leadership development coaching training workshops, keynotes and all of that.
So, winning partners dot dot com but also always happy to connect on linkedin. Always happy to have a conversation. I’m even a fan of the good old fashioned phone call. So the numbers out there, you can call 4124445563. Even in this age of texting and emails and all of those various ways to communicate.
Sometimes a nice normal human conversation is the most efficient and effective. So all those means are fine. And as we said earlier, you can always find the energy detox, go ahead and google or you can find it on any of your favorite podcasting platforms.
Jason Spiess
The supply chain of that promotion was the energy first came from waiting partners and then there was a website avenue, a phone call avenue and email avenue, a social media avenue, there was all kinds of avenues for that energy to go to be channeled through. And in the end it ends up back at winning partners for the return on that investment of energy. And that’s how I look at it, joe in all honesty, is that that’s how it goes and that’s how we’ve always taken the crude life and we’ve
been able to grow every year now, it’s not 100% growth. It’s that traditional 10 15 20% but it’s that slow and steady, wins the race. And quite honestly when you love what you do, that is a very, very successful career just to have a slow and steady wins the race, because that means every day you wake up and you do, you love what you do, you really do. And that sounds like what you do to joe, you really love what you do. So maybe you don’t. But
Joe Sinnott
to me
Jason Spiess
it seems like you
Joe Sinnott
do, it’s all just a facade Jase that last hour that we just talked about actually have no passion for the energy industry or leadership or love or any of those things, but no, in all seriousness, whether you call it slow and steady or whether you call it in, uh, you know, hedging your bets and locking in good prices, that will ensure a steady return for years to come.
I think that’s the key to healthy relationships, that’s the key to a marriage, that’s the key to uh, you know, ensuring that your love isn’t just a flash in the pan, but something that is able to sustained. So again, for everybody listening, you’re looking to sustain success, whether it’s personal success or professional success.
Always happy to have a conversation like this one with Jason and always happy to engage with anybody who’s listening out there as part of your audience there, Jason, you got a great audience, a great show and certainly appreciate you having me on again to have this lovely conversation today. …
Jason Spiess
Beep and artificial chat on love. Now, …
Joe Sinnott
that was, that was great. I was trying to, trying to find the, hold on, Let me
Jason Spiess
uh
Joe Sinnott
well, just make sure you make sure you end this. But if if you forget to end this and people are still listening again, this is the real Jason and joe. Hopefully it sounds exactly as the same as the last hour or so that you subjected yourself to. So okay, now I will officially end the recording.
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