Diana Alt [00:00:04]:
Hey, Diane Alt here, and this is Work Should Feel Good, the podcast where your career growth meets your real life. Each week I share stories, strategies, and mindset shifts to help you build a work life that works for you on your terms. Hey everybody. Welcome to Work Should Feel Good, the show where your career growth meets your real life. I'm your host, Diana Alton. Today we're doing a little something different. My guest, Karen Spice, and I are both podcast hosts, help— focused on helping people create success on their own terms all throughout their life. So instead of a traditional interview, we're just going to talk about stuff that we've learned from creating content, building relationships, like working with people that are in that juicy middle of their life where they're trying to chase more purpose.

Diana Alt [00:00:57]:
All that kind of good stuff. I don't really know where it's going to go, except for we said we were going to talk about podcasting. Karen is a brand strategist, entrepreneur, and host of the Second Wind Women podcast, which I got to be a guest on some months back. She shines a light on women who are reinventing themselves after successful corporate careers, and she also helps nonprofits and mission-driven organizations clarify message and marketing. Welcome to the show, or whatever it is that we're doing today. How are you?

Karen Spies [00:01:32]:
I'm great. I am great.

Diana Alt [00:01:34]:
I'm very happy to be here. I think that, um, it's very interesting living in the age of being a podcast person because number one, podcasters talk about their podcasts all the time because it's a lot of effort and it's time-consuming. But also because of the number of pitches. Do you get a lot of pitches for your show?

Karen Spies [00:01:56]:
I've gotten a couple. I keep getting pitches for Second Wind Women from people who are like, Bill is really amazing at what he does. And I'm like, well, that's great for Bill.

Diana Alt [00:02:09]:
Is Bill helping women in the second act of their life? If he is, then cool. But what?

Karen Spies [00:02:16]:
What do you do then? It's more, you know, I'm more like highlighting women who are, who are making a change and, and what the, what the tipping point is for them making that change, etc. I don't know about, you know, Bill belongs somewhere else. God love you, Bill. Yeah, yeah.

Diana Alt [00:02:33]:
I, I have gotten a rash of people that they send in the— well, it'll be bad PR agencies, so really what it is. In some cases, it's bad PR agencies trained to work on spec. They basically have a brand they want to represent. They will go pretend to represent that brand or that person, try to get them on podcasts, and then come back and say, look at all the podcasts I got you on, you need to pay me now, which is just gross. But I've gotten to the point where If it comes from a PR agency when I already have a list of like 50 people I want to talk to and it grows all the time, I'm not super interested. So, but I'm not getting— I interview men and women though. Like my, the way that my show works is a little bit different.

Karen Spies [00:03:24]:
So yeah.

Diana Alt [00:03:25]:
How far in are you? How many have you been? How many do you have in the can now? Or 40 out? Whatever makes sense. However you want to answer.

Karen Spies [00:03:34]:
I got 40 up and maybe 10 in the can.

Diana Alt [00:03:37]:
That's a lot. It feels good to have 10 in the can, actually.

Karen Spies [00:03:41]:
It feels great to have 10 in the can, but I'm telling you, that can keeps growing.

Diana Alt [00:03:47]:
What's going on? Like, why, what, why is stuff in the can not out?

Karen Spies [00:03:52]:
Just because, so, you know, my, my podcast is not necessarily making me money. It's not monetized, right? So I am actually— I have clients and stuff. I have, you know, actually, you know, non-chatting stuff that's on my plate. So, you know, the first thing that usually gets put on the back burner is the podcast editing.

Diana Alt [00:04:19]:
That's so interesting. One thing I get asked about a lot— well, we were talking right before I hit record about how everybody wants to know downloads, downloads, subscribers, and I barely even know that because I think the motivation for me starting the podcast was maybe different than some people. What was your, what was your motivation to actually start the podcast?

Karen Spies [00:04:45]:
I would say my motivation was part of it was just to feel a sense of like, I always say like to inspire, highlight, And I forget what the third one is, like women who are going through this journey. Right. So the whole, the whole crux, the whole story of how I started the podcast was actually like many years ago before I was— Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:05:10]:
Now we're getting into it. This is like, I don't care about the 3 things. I care about this story.

Karen Spies [00:05:16]:
So, exactly, exactly. So, so I was at a birthday party, like a 12-year-old birthday party. And it was one of the very last birthday parties that the kids do. Cause by the time they get older, they don't care about that. Shitty.

Diana Alt [00:05:30]:
Last thing.

Karen Spies [00:05:30]:
So we're at a park and I'm sorry.

Diana Alt [00:05:34]:
The last thing they want to do is hang out with mom and dad and auntie for their 14th birthday.

Karen Spies [00:05:40]:
They don't want the parents there, right?

Diana Alt [00:05:42]:
Yeah.

Karen Spies [00:05:42]:
So at any rate, we're there and I'm talking with some of the other moms and one of the other moms had just lost her job. And she's like, I'm 45, which seems so old at the time. And she's like, how am I ever going to find another job? She's like, how am I ever going to find another job? And I'm like, Yeah, like it's— it was a rash. There was like 4 or 5 different moms who were like, I feel like I'm about to get pushed out and I don't know where else I'm gonna go. I've always worked in corporate my whole life. And, you know, and so there was— I was like, this is really a thing, you know.

Diana Alt [00:06:18]:
It's a thing.

Karen Spies [00:06:20]:
It wasn't necessarily a thing for me because I've always been like an artist entrepreneur person. who was like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this thing. I'm gonna do this new thing. So it wasn't as much for me, but I could really see, you know, I was having a new transition every, you know, couple of years just of my own, out of my own, uh, curiosity and, uh, craziness.

Diana Alt [00:06:44]:
My parents worked the same places for decades and they actually worked in, they worked at the community college level as teachers.

Karen Spies [00:06:55]:
professors.

Diana Alt [00:06:55]:
And then they both were department chairs at various points in time. And I heard them all like so much talk about basically being a slave to the pension. And I've never had a pension in my life and I've never wanted to be a slave to anything. So there was an incident a few years before my dad retired from the place they worked for a long time. And It just went south for him, like, right away. He felt like he got treated really poorly by administration. It changed how he saw everything, and he literally started counting class days because he knew exactly how many days, how many weeks in the semester, and the whole 9 yards. And like, when he's 3 years out from retiring and he's counting class days for 3 years, I'm like, that is not a way to spend your life.

Diana Alt [00:07:44]:
So yeah, it—

Karen Spies [00:07:46]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:07:46]:
depressed me. So you decided that was the seed that got planted to start the—

Karen Spies [00:07:52]:
That was, that was the seed. And also like, it's kind of— can you swear on this podcast?

Diana Alt [00:07:58]:
Do we? Oh yeah, please, please. Okay.

Karen Spies [00:08:01]:
It's kind of fucking lonely, you know, when it's like, you're, it's you, you're hiring contractors, you're working directly with your clients and all like that. Like there's not a lot of like, there's no water cooler. There's no kind of camaraderie. And I was like, I know that there are other people out there who are doing amazing things. And I love connecting with people. And here I am like, you know, all you do is type all day.

Diana Alt [00:08:29]:
Yeah.

Karen Spies [00:08:29]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:08:30]:
I, when I did, when I decided to do the show, um, well, I had had people encouraging me from like 5 years before I started the show, like, you're compelling. To talk to. You're a good conversationalist. I suspect you'd be good at this. And I, I was intimidated as anything about everything related to production. Like, I knew I could have the conversation, but I always said, until I can just show up, I can decide who the guests are and show up and talk and not have to do anything else, I'm not interested. And I'm actually about— I won't say I'm 100% there, but I'm like 70% there. And I'm working on getting to be about 90% there.

Diana Alt [00:09:11]:
Um, 'cause I'm doing a project with the VA agency that I work with, 'cause I want to talk— my whole motivation is I want to talk to interesting people, especially the ones you might not otherwise get access to.

Karen Spies [00:09:23]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:09:24]:
And then I wanted fodder for content. So whether that is actually, oh, here's the, you know, 60-second clips of the show that I put all over creation like we do. Or it could just be pull transcripts, get ideas, write a blog, do follow-up YouTubes or whatever. That's what I wanted. And anything else is kind of gravy. But I'll tell you what, it shifted my business.

Karen Spies [00:09:49]:
Oh yeah. Uh-huh. It has.

Diana Alt [00:09:52]:
Because so much of my business for so long was job search focused. And which is fine. Like I help people with job searches, but I wanted to get more in the other 90% of people's careers. And also I've worked with more and more people that are like, yeah, help me find a corporate job, but eventually I want to be an entrepreneur. Um, so I want to start something on the side. So I'm kind of orbiting that space too.

Karen Spies [00:10:17]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:10:18]:
And I just said, you know, that's, that's where I want to go because I like having deep ongoing relationships and just the podcast and the content I put out since 80, 90% of it isn't focused on job search has shifted that. I actually had a conversation with a friend of mine back in June when we were at a conference together, and I was like, this is changing and I don't know why. And he's like, it's the podcast. But like, I don't know what I did. You started a podcast. But, but there's not many people listening to the podcast. It's new and it's a long game. And he's like, you have clips everywhere.

Diana Alt [00:10:57]:
Like, it's the podcast. So—

Karen Spies [00:11:00]:
Oh my gosh. Yeah, I have to tell you, like, what you're talking about with like just showing up. I did have a podcast 10 years ago. I had a podcast and the production was a nightmare. It took me like 8 hours to finish like one episode. Nope.

Diana Alt [00:11:25]:
Nope.

Karen Spies [00:11:25]:
I, it was, it was amazing. It was so great, but like I was tearing my hair out, literally.

Diana Alt [00:11:33]:
That is a lot. What was your old podcast about though? How long did you do it? Give me all the tea.

Karen Spies [00:11:40]:
My old podcast was called, um, Honest Talk About Adoption. So it was like—

Diana Alt [00:11:46]:
Are you an adoptive mom or were you adopted?

Karen Spies [00:11:48]:
I'm a birth mom.

Diana Alt [00:11:50]:
You're a birth mom. Okay.

Karen Spies [00:11:51]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:11:52]:
Gotcha.

Karen Spies [00:11:53]:
Um, so yeah, it was basically talking with people who had either given up a child for adoption or a child who had reconnected with their parent or, you know, all the different variations that happen around that. And the stories were emotional and they were incredible. Um, and it was, but it was just like, it was, it was the editing that killed me, which is sad because it was so great. And, and the reason I started it is that— so I reconnected with my son that I'd given up for adoption.

Diana Alt [00:12:24]:
Oh, great. Okay.

Karen Spies [00:12:26]:
And he and I went to one of these like TEDx talks, and there was a woman up there who gave a story, and she's like, she's like, I went to look for my birth mom, and then I, I called and left a message on her phone, and she never called me back. And that was the conclusion of her story. The conclusion was, but I have, you know, family. The church is like my family. And I'm like, my son looked at me, he's like, What's wrong with that lady? And I was like, not enough people have heard, you know, non-horrible stories.

Diana Alt [00:12:57]:
Yeah. Yeah. It's— that's a— that is a whole doozy of a conversation right there. We might do more on that, but yeah, I'm interested. What were you doing for 8 hours? My dirty secret is I don't edit anything.

Karen Spies [00:13:13]:
That's my new dirty secret. Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:13:15]:
Okay. Isn't it the best?

Karen Spies [00:13:17]:
Oh my gosh. Not caring is amazing.

Diana Alt [00:13:21]:
Do you still produce everything yourself? Because I have a team that produces, but I don't— I still— they still don't edit very much.

Karen Spies [00:13:29]:
So yeah, I, I mean, along with AI, you know, I'll review stuff. I'll like tweak stuff. I produce it all myself. It's, it's so, it's so easy now. It literally takes me like I don't know, 20, 30 minutes to get through an hour-long interview and have it like—

Diana Alt [00:13:46]:
I decided I don't care. I don't want to learn that stuff. Um, and I, you know, like you pick up a little bit here and there, but I do the video. I record audio and video. So hello, people out in the world. I don't know what you're listening to, but I do audio and video. And for the video, I do nothing. Unless there's like— Like I had someone, I had someone one time, their internet was really unstable for like 10 minutes in the middle of the show.

Diana Alt [00:14:15]:
So we had to do a little surgery to that one. But I just do nothing. It's just like, here you go, YouTube Premiere. I livestream it on YouTube, on LinkedIn. That's it. And then I recorded an intro and my team does that. My team puts it in Libsyn. And then, um, more and more they're taking over like all of the promo, writing the promo.

Diana Alt [00:14:40]:
I wrote some GPTs and stuff, so we leverage AI in it.

Karen Spies [00:14:43]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:14:44]:
But it's a hell of a lot easier and I've gotten busier with other stuff, so I'm letting go. I'm very particular about content. Like it doesn't need to be overly produced, but it still needs to be good. And I'm starting to Let some of it be ripped from my cold, dead hands a little bit more easily, which is exciting.

Karen Spies [00:15:03]:
I mean, yeah.

Diana Alt [00:15:05]:
I mean, and they're— we're trying to reduce their time spent too. I actually am working on a project to increase certain types of content because I want to like start a LinkedIn newsletter. Basically, I want to do a blog. I want to do a blog post out of each Episode. I haven't been doing that, um, but we're working on that so that effectively I drop a video in a Google Drive and magic happens. And then tiny bit of editing because sometimes Claude doesn't do the right thing.

Karen Spies [00:15:39]:
Yeah, I mean, I have— I make a blog post and a page on my website for every single episode that I do.

Diana Alt [00:15:44]:
I do have— I do have a landing page for every episode, but to me the The landing page is about the episode and it has the links to all the, you know, YouTube, Spotify, whatever. It has the transcript because SEO is a thing.

Karen Spies [00:15:59]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:15:59]:
And it's about the episode, but the blog, my approach to the blog post is going to be insight-driven. So whatever we, whatever we concoct is like the coolest angle from this episode. I would take the insights from that, which could just simply be like, Here is what Diana and Karen thought about podcasting or how they each manage their podcasts differently. Um, because nobody wants an email or a blog post that's just a summary of a podcast.

Karen Spies [00:16:29]:
I mean, I send out a link to my, to my list. I send it. I need to— here's the latest podcast. That's it.

Diana Alt [00:16:37]:
Yeah.

Karen Spies [00:16:37]:
I have been working on trying to make that a little bit more matching cups. Almost.

Diana Alt [00:16:45]:
Oh no.

Karen Spies [00:16:46]:
Yeah, mine says Glamma on it. Oh, but they probably bought it at Buc-ee's.

Diana Alt [00:16:52]:
My goal is to get sponsored by Buc-ee's at some point, and I don't really care, like, even if they give me like a $25 gift card and I'm able to say for one episode that I'm sponsored.

Karen Spies [00:17:04]:
I mean, Buc-ee's doesn't even sell their own stuff online. They use like a third-party person to sell their products online.

Diana Alt [00:17:09]:
I just I got this in person.

Karen Spies [00:17:12]:
Yeah. Amazing.

Diana Alt [00:17:14]:
I got this in person. So when you and I were emailing back and forth about doing this episode, like, you made a comment to me, like, your content is everywhere. And I feel like I'm doing stuff, but not that much. Like, what are you seeing from me? I see you pop up on my YouTube. Oh, LinkedIn.

Karen Spies [00:17:36]:
Yeah. Yeah. LinkedIn, really LinkedIn.

Diana Alt [00:17:39]:
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Um, well, I'm glad you see it. The algorithms don't always act kind to us.

Karen Spies [00:17:47]:
Oh my God.

Diana Alt [00:17:48]:
Yeah.

Karen Spies [00:17:49]:
I, um, you know, you're talking about, you know, visual versus audio. There was a woman who I interviewed, her interview was great, but her, she basically ended up doing it from her phone and she did it landscape. And I was like, oh, for sure that the software will fix that. No, the entire interview had her coming in from the right-hand side.

Diana Alt [00:18:14]:
Just go for it. Whatever works.

Karen Spies [00:18:17]:
I ended up with— I ended up— I just released it as audio. I ended up with one clip before she turned the phone and I was like, I'm sorry.

Diana Alt [00:18:26]:
Hang on. We're just doing this. Yeah. I think it's so interesting because there's a lot of people that have so many opinions on Is it really a podcast if it's video? Should you really—

Karen Spies [00:18:37]:
people have opinions on this?

Diana Alt [00:18:38]:
Oh my God. Have you hung out? Do you ever hang out in any groups or spaces where people—

Karen Spies [00:18:46]:
There was a thing last week. There was a whole like online forum, podcast forum, and they had like— I didn't have time for it.

Diana Alt [00:18:56]:
You know what? I'm a content— I'm a business owner that has a podcast.

Karen Spies [00:19:01]:
Exactly.

Diana Alt [00:19:03]:
I'm not a quote-unquote podcaster TM, so that's my take on it. Who's the— who's a couple of the most interesting guests you've had?

Karen Spies [00:19:15]:
Oh my gosh, you know, it's funny because like I can be very cynical, but then every guest, after I finish interviewing them, I'm just like so in love with them. I'm like, they're the most amazing person.

Diana Alt [00:19:28]:
I know it sounds so That's the best interview I've ever had. And then you're like, that's the best. Yeah, you can have a 2 o'clock interview and it's the best interview you ever had and do another one at 3:30. No, that's the best.

Karen Spies [00:19:41]:
That's the best one. Yeah, there was, uh, there was a woman named Kat Rambo, like Rambo the movie.

Diana Alt [00:19:49]:
Cool.

Karen Spies [00:19:49]:
And I always do—

Diana Alt [00:19:51]:
What a banger of a name.

Karen Spies [00:19:52]:
Right? Um, I always do like a little pre-interview thing and she sent me a pitch and she's like, Um, I heal people with witchcraft and herbalism. And I'm like, okay, okay, fine. Let's talk. We can do that, whatever. And then she showed up and she's like, oh yeah, I have a degree in physics and I ran an accounting firm, uh, you know, for 10 years until I had a car accident and like a spiritual awakening. And I'm like, holy shit.

Diana Alt [00:20:22]:
I love shit like that. It's so good.

Karen Spies [00:20:26]:
And so many people have a story like that. And you go to like, this is the thing that I love about podcasting. This'll be a great clip. The thing I love about podcasting is you go and you meet somebody at a, at a networking thing and you're like, hey, how is it? What do you do? And they're like, oh yeah, you know, I, I help with financial services. Okay, great. That's fine. But if you go on a podcast—

Diana Alt [00:20:49]:
Congratulations on your financial services career.

Karen Spies [00:20:53]:
Yeah, but you go on a podcast and you're like, well, how did you get into financial services? And they're like, well, you know, my dad had a gambling debt and sold our house and we lived under a bridge for 6 years. And then you're like, holy shit, that's a totally different story, you know? Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:21:10]:
I love that. Usually when I'm doing like a regular-ass interview, not just whatever it is that we're doing today, which feels different and I'm enjoying it. I do. I spend the first few minutes a little bit on someone's career journey. So the way I structure an interview is most of the people that I've interviewed, I've known at least on some level. A couple have been introduced. I've had maybe 5 people that pitched me. Um, and it's always like the person that pitches me themselves.

Diana Alt [00:21:41]:
So like weird PR agency with a bad pitch is a no.

Karen Spies [00:21:45]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:21:45]:
But the individual saying, I really think I'm a fit and here's why. can be a yes. But I will, if I can find something wildcard about somebody that I know they're not expecting to talk about, that's my favorite. So one gal that I worked with for years is a VP of data and AI for like a finance-related startup. But when I was, I hadn't talked to her in a while. So I go back to her LinkedIn and I look at it and she will put any certificate that she gets. And she had taken like a wine tasting. class.

Karen Spies [00:22:19]:
Mm-hmm.

Diana Alt [00:22:21]:
And she put it on LinkedIn because why not? So I like kicked off with talking about wine tasting and she said, I've always loved wine and my husband and I moved to Manhattan and we know we won't always live here, but that's such a, you know, it's such a New York City thing to do, to take this. So we did it. And I love— so I love whenever I can do something like that. And then I like to talk to people about their career journey because I think the context is helpful. You know, it's, it's one thing to say, oh, this is a smart lady and she's You know, a VP of data and AI at this company. But when you find out she majored in English, right?

Karen Spies [00:22:58]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:22:58]:
She majored in English and got master's degrees in like research processes and measurement, and then went and was a psychometrician. Hi Jennifer, if you're listening to this. Um, then she was a psychometrician, and then like now she's this technology leader. It's such an interesting and different path. I always find that so cool.

Karen Spies [00:23:20]:
Is she your favorite? Like, who's your most surprising guest that you had that gave you like the biggest wild card where you were like—

Diana Alt [00:23:28]:
So I wasn't— I feel like by the time I find out about the wild card and then like tie it to the person, it's not like it makes sense to me. It's just like, oh, that's who they are. But, um, probably the one that's gonna make the most people go, what? Is I interviewed— I've had 2 Survivor contestants on my show.

Karen Spies [00:23:56]:
Oh, nice.

Diana Alt [00:23:57]:
One is a really close friend of mine. I knew her for years before. And then I met the other one who I haven't released his episode with. Uh, I released his episode a few weeks after we're recording this. And I met him because he sells art. And he at one point was on Dr. Phil, like, because of a substance problem. And he was regarded as like this evil person, like this, you know, manipulative human on Survivor, which I've never understood.

Diana Alt [00:24:27]:
I finally watched his season because I don't really watch it. Like, I've seen like 3 or 4—

Karen Spies [00:24:31]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:24:32]:
3 or 4 seasons of Survivor total. And one was because after I booked Todd on the show, I said, okay, I'll watch your season now that you're gonna be on my show. And then my friend was on one and I watched like the original one way back in the day. But like, that's kind of an interesting thing because he talked very openly about in his early to mid-20s having a substance abuse problem that damn near killed him. And he got for whatever reason ended up on Dr. Phil. I don't know if his parents called him or Dr. Phil's producers found out about him, but that's not a normal conversation.

Diana Alt [00:25:11]:
Um, and I appreciate the openness. So, cause you know, you get somebody on a show and they're like, I damn near died. Okay.

Karen Spies [00:25:19]:
Well, that's— yeah.

Diana Alt [00:25:20]:
I mean, conversation about that.

Karen Spies [00:25:22]:
I, yeah, I talked, I do my pre-interview with people, you know, I'm like, Not that I want to, like, not that I want you to spill your guts all over the page, but like, people pay attention when there's drama.

Diana Alt [00:25:34]:
Well, I— what was so interesting about getting him on the show is that, and it is one of my favorite interviews objectively. Like, when I went back through, I'm just curating clips that, you know, I have the AI clip tool Opus Clip that I use and whenever I went back through and was looking at it, I was like, damn, we went there. Like, there's some good stuff in here. But I asked him to be on the show because we— I had bought art from him because he does custom Funko Pops that it could be like Marvel stuff or Survivor contestants, or I could order one of you. Like, I could send a picture of you and be like, oh, I see, Karen, into a Funko Pop. And I had ordered art one day, um, but A couple of years ago, and then was friends with him on Facebook since then. And then one day he asked people, hey, can you send me pictures? I need a little inspiration, or I'd love to see you with the art that I made for you. I sent it back.

Diana Alt [00:26:32]:
We ended up chatting, and I was like, do you know what? Like, what you did is really cool. You did a bunch of stuff early in your life that the people you and I in particular have worked with, we feel like we have to be so perfect in corporate. Um, and if we do any— I mean, we can't like have an opinion in a basic LinkedIn post about our own industry without being in fear, or a lot of those people can't. I'm like, you literally went on a reality show and ended up talking about an alcohol problem on Dr. Phil and then had a little, you know, career changes in the middle of that. And now you have this thriving business that's got a following. Like, that's a story. And he told me, um, after we recorded, he's like, I turned down about— I get approached like 3 to 5 times a week To be on a podcast, I tell almost everybody no.

Diana Alt [00:27:23]:
And I came on your show because I knew we weren't just gonna rehash the same stuff from 19 years ago. We were gonna—

Karen Spies [00:27:29]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:27:29]:
We were gonna have— plus you bought my art. Like, I wanna support what you did 'cause you supported what I did.

Karen Spies [00:27:34]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:27:34]:
And that's, that's the kind of, like, I wanted to build relationships with people. Like, is he my best friend?

Karen Spies [00:27:40]:
No.

Diana Alt [00:27:40]:
Can I text him if I have a question about something?

Karen Spies [00:27:43]:
Yes. Right.

Diana Alt [00:27:46]:
Who would be like a dream guest for you? Like, do you have any aspirations to have like the New York Times bestselling author, like, you know, people anyone would know, or do you mostly like just the regular-ass people?

Karen Spies [00:27:59]:
I just, I love, I love, love, love how the regular-ass people always have something behind the door that you don't know what it is.

Diana Alt [00:28:09]:
Yeah.

Karen Spies [00:28:09]:
You know? To me, that's so incredible. I— it's like, you know, I remember years ago when I was like watching some old man cross the street, and I was like thinking to myself like, oh my God, I wish this guy would hurry up. And I'm like, he's somebody's baby. Like, he has like all these experiences that I will never know. And all of us are such like, you know, such a— like the, the experiences that we have and what sticks in our heads and how we interpret what has happened to us. I mean, I got a master's degree in Buddhist studies. This is like my thing. I think it's amazing, the perception that you have of your experience, you know, because—

Diana Alt [00:28:51]:
The older I get, the more I love the messiness of people.

Karen Spies [00:28:55]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:28:56]:
And what I really love is the messiness of people who don't let the mess stop them from doing things that they want to do. Like, might it be ugly and painful and take extra effort than somebody that didn't have the same kind of mess? Absolutely. But I just really enjoy, um, being with, you know, as a coach, I'm with people who are in their mess a lot. And as which I'm going to have to make sure, like, we should put in our show notes, like my episode. We want to make sure it gets you some extra watch hours. But yeah, yeah, I just think the mess is so interesting because when I'm coaching people, a lot of times they're in the mess, especially if they got laid off after umpteen years at their job. And now they're like, what, I have to look for a job now? This is hard. This feels like rejection.

Diana Alt [00:29:47]:
Um, and then I like when I see people coming out of the mess. I have a client right now that is— she's an entrepreneur in a different space than I've ever worked, but we just get along really well.

Karen Spies [00:29:58]:
Mm-hmm.

Diana Alt [00:29:59]:
And she has a lot, just a lot of stuff coming up that has been a blocker for her. And half of what I do is help her sort through, like, which of these problems is actually yours? You know?

Karen Spies [00:30:12]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:30:12]:
Like, you've just listed 5 problems, but only 2 of them are yours. So let's focus on those 2 that are actually yours. And I bet the other 3 will start to resolve themselves if you work on the 2 that are yours. I love that shit.

Karen Spies [00:30:27]:
I think we're talking about the same thing because like that woman that I mentioned, Kat Rambo, was talking about like the spirit, like how she had this crisis, right? And that totally shifted her life. And that's kind of the crux of what I'm talking with people about. So, you know, the mess is the, is the last point in the story where you're like, fuck it, I can't do this anymore. You know?

Diana Alt [00:30:52]:
I love the fuck it. They make me happy. Like, I'm just not putting up with this shit anymore. And I think we have, like, in life, we have, like, big fuck it moments and we have little fuck it moments. Like, earlier this morning, I was over-engineering something and I was like, I'm not doing— this is dumb. Why am I spending this much time on this? I can— I don't need to do this. I'm doing a webinar that I've done before.

Karen Spies [00:31:16]:
Mm-hmm.

Diana Alt [00:31:17]:
I haven't done it in over a year, but I'm doing this in September. It's a resume webinar and September is Update Your Resume Month. I figured like, well, let's do a little lead gen in September. And I was looking at it and thinking all the ways it could be better. And I'm like, Diana, you get 100 people on your email list every fucking time you run this. So just change the dates. Just, just change the dates and tell your VA team to put it out.

Karen Spies [00:31:43]:
Oh, you mean you were creating from scratch again when you already had a template?

Diana Alt [00:31:47]:
I was. Well, no, I was looking at— I've changed some of my, you know, I've slightly changed some messaging and like, do I want the same CTA and like all this, you know, afterward? And I was just like, this worked. If I decide that I want to sell a discounted coaching call instead of this job search digital course, that is a button and I can decide later. I'm not doing it for 2 months. I can just send this off now and we can get it done. It'll be 95% done. So Um, that to me is a small fuck it moment. Um, getting a promotion rescinded and realizing you're miserable— I'm glad it happened because I would have stayed at this job that I was actually hating.

Diana Alt [00:32:30]:
Um, but that is a bigger fuck it moment, right? Your husband dying when you're 34— huge fuck it moment. So those are, those are good.

Karen Spies [00:32:42]:
Um, messy, messy moments that make you who you are, you know. It's like, um, one of my favorite little cartoons. It's like how we picture success, and it's like an arrow. How it actually is, it's like, you know.

Diana Alt [00:32:56]:
And the— that shit— that the spaghetti in the middle is actually the coolest part. If this— if the spaghetti in the middle didn't exist, number one, life would be boring. Number two, I wouldn't have a job. And I like, I like you.

Karen Spies [00:33:11]:
Nobody needs your advice, Diana.

Diana Alt [00:33:14]:
Uh, they sure do, whether they realize it or not.

Karen Spies [00:33:17]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:33:17]:
Uh, I want to go somewhere weird.

Karen Spies [00:33:20]:
Okay.

Diana Alt [00:33:20]:
And maybe, maybe we can't even do anything with this. Have you seen The Odyssey yet?

Karen Spies [00:33:25]:
No, I have not. Although I did hear somebody say something about The Odyssey when I was waiting for you to let me in the room.

Diana Alt [00:33:31]:
Oh yeah? What did you hear?

Karen Spies [00:33:34]:
I can't believe they cast so-and-so in The Odyssey. No, that was from a conversation earlier. Oh my gosh.

Diana Alt [00:33:41]:
I wish you'd seen it 'cause I could rant about that all day. Yesterday I had a coaching appointment. I have a client that is a big Christopher Nolan fan. And so we did like our coaching appointment and I told her I went to The Odyssey and she's like, I've been, I think she said she'd been twice or she was gonna go again. So we ended up spending 20 minutes just talking about it. Um, I think that the Venn diagram of people that are mad about Lupita and the people that wear red hats for fun is a circle. So that's my— that's Lupita, red hat, MAGA.

Karen Spies [00:34:18]:
I got the red hat. I don't know what Lupita is.

Diana Alt [00:34:20]:
Lupita Nyong'o plays Helen of Troy.

Karen Spies [00:34:24]:
Oh, you're saying she's not a white girl? Is that what you're saying?

Diana Alt [00:34:27]:
Yeah. They're saying she's not a white girl, so it's a problem. She's not Diane Kruger.

Karen Spies [00:34:32]:
I think how many people in the Middle East at that time were white, right? In Greece, I, I don't think that was a thing.

Diana Alt [00:34:40]:
The biggest argument that people have, and this is where you go like, this is where like media literacy, actually understanding context of the stuff they made you read in school, is a thing. The biggest thing where I can understand some people being upset is they're like, well, Homer said she had white arms. And I'm like, guys, that is a class distinguisher, not a skin color. Because back then, yeah, I, I had— I'm like, there's something in this, and I had to go back and research it. Um, but really, because there's language in there that says she has like alabaster arms or white arms, the context behind it was 2 things. Number one, she was considered so beautiful because she looked different than people. She was so beautiful, so almost like otherworldly. That's part of the context.

Diana Alt [00:35:38]:
But the other thing is that in that era, everybody had to be outside.

Karen Spies [00:35:46]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:35:46]:
And she was basically royalty that didn't have to work a day in her life. Her job was to be the queen, was raised that way. So it was about sun exposure. It was about, it wasn't about melanin, if that makes sense. So, and I'm finding myself like nerding out about stuff I read years ago. And I started reading, like, I started reading the version, what's her name?

Karen Spies [00:36:14]:
I was going to mention that, the, the tran— the woman who translated.

Diana Alt [00:36:17]:
I'm reading Emily Wilson, I think is her name. Her last name's Wilson, but I started reading that translation literally just last night, 'cause I'm like, it's time to bust this out because people just, they don't understand much.

Karen Spies [00:36:29]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:36:29]:
So you have to tell me what you think whenever you finally go watch it.

Karen Spies [00:36:33]:
I'll tell you what I think. I can't keep up with the movies. I heard that movie where people were— Fathom or something. I heard that was really good too.

Diana Alt [00:36:41]:
Oh, I didn't see that one. So I don't— I, I forget about going and then I'm like, why don't I go more often? So I'm going to Nashville for vacation next week and they have one of those 70mm IMAX. It's probably all full, but I'm gonna see if I can get into, you know, maybe, maybe I'll go see it as Christopher Nolan shot it.

Karen Spies [00:37:05]:
But do they show pop— they do show popular movies as IMAX now, don't they?

Diana Alt [00:37:11]:
Yeah, the, the thing with this that I didn't know about this until like right when it was releasing, but it's the first film that was ever 100% shot on IMAX.

Karen Spies [00:37:24]:
Oh, really?

Diana Alt [00:37:26]:
So yeah, first feature-length film. Usually when people shoot IMAX, I guess they'll do like the big action scenes, um, and Chris Nolan was like, fuck it, we're doing the whole thing that way.

Karen Spies [00:37:41]:
Um, you got it, might as well.

Diana Alt [00:37:43]:
And even got IMAX to like build him equipment to address some problems. that come up whenever you try to use those cameras because I guess they're really loud. What's that one?

Karen Spies [00:37:53]:
It's called like a Phantom, a Phantom camera, a RED camera. It's like, no, it shoots in like 6K. It's like a crazy, crazy—

Diana Alt [00:38:01]:
oh man.

Karen Spies [00:38:04]:
Yeah, yeah. Um, tech stuff.

Diana Alt [00:38:06]:
What else you want to talk about? We beat the podcast to death and you haven't seen the movie that I'm currently obsessed with.

Karen Spies [00:38:12]:
Oh yeah, yeah, we did beat the podcast to death. Um, we could talk about getting a job when you're over 40.

Diana Alt [00:38:24]:
Let's do it.

Karen Spies [00:38:26]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:38:26]:
Do you talk to people? Does this come up a ton on your podcast with your guests?

Karen Spies [00:38:31]:
It does. It does. People either they get laid off or they just, you know, they get fed up and they know that they can't start over. And I would argue that After 45, you, you know, like if you start over, you're not actually starting over. You have a whole—

Diana Alt [00:38:49]:
That part. Okay.

Karen Spies [00:38:51]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:38:51]:
Someone needs to stitch that shit on a pillow because, um, the career, like, I think a lot of that is a holdover from like our boomer, like our generations. You and I are about the same age. I think I'm 51.

Karen Spies [00:39:10]:
Oh no, I'm 58.

Diana Alt [00:39:12]:
Oh, well, your skincare looks good. So we're close.

Karen Spies [00:39:15]:
I stay inside a lot.

Diana Alt [00:39:16]:
Like, we're Gen Xers, so like, we're mostly like Silent Generation, or for the youngest Gen Xers, Boomers, right? Um, they, they still had this like work 30 years the same place, climb the ladder, get the gold watch thing going on. And so a lot of people that are in this age bracket of 45+, thinking about this, feel like they have to start over because that's how it was for a long time.

Karen Spies [00:39:43]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:39:44]:
It was hard to move. And I like to say the career ladder is not a career ladder. It's like a rock wall. Um, because when you're dealing with a rock wall, number one, something I found interesting that I learned During the Tokyo— which Olympics did we just do? Paris. During the Paris Summer Olympics, they have rock climbing events in there. And I learned that the rock climbing thing that you do to compete is called a problem.

Karen Spies [00:40:16]:
Oh.

Diana Alt [00:40:17]:
Which I think is an interesting framing.

Karen Spies [00:40:20]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:40:20]:
Um, and in certain rock climbing events, it's called a problem. And the biggest thing that people have, if you pay attention or you read about it, You have to— they literally build them so that sometimes you have to go down to go up.

Karen Spies [00:40:41]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:40:42]:
And so if we think about, like, if we're doing our career thing, sometimes you're gonna have to go down, and that's fine. Um, and I think most people are resigned, like, well, it's okay to go laterally. I can go from being a director of sales enablement to a director of marketing or something like that, right? But sometimes you literally need to take a step back And it's actually a good thing. Um, and so like, stop freaking out because if you're trying to climb a rock wall that's your life, you might just have to go like down one rung on that, you know, go down 3 feet out of the 90 you're trying to climb.

Karen Spies [00:41:17]:
Well, you know, like if, if you, if you've always had, you know, you know, you're familiar with the golden handcuffs, right? Idea, right? If you've always had like, oh, I just go in and I work on my stuff and, and I just pay for my insurance, health insurance, and this and that and this and that. You know, like you've got it all dialed and then all of a sudden you have to handle all that stuff for yourself. Then it's a totally different situation, right?

Diana Alt [00:41:45]:
It is a different situation.

Karen Spies [00:41:47]:
And I can think it can be really unsettling for people because they're like, yeah, I didn't realize it was this hard.

Diana Alt [00:41:55]:
It, well, it's, it's, there's a couple contexts with that. That's interesting. So there's one that What I find interesting is when people struggle with that and then they're like, fuck it, I don't want to go back to corporate, so I'm going to start a business. And I'm like, you think starting a business is easier than spending 6 months looking for a job and figuring out how to cover COBRA? Like, you're delusional if you think it's easier.

Karen Spies [00:42:20]:
Everybody on the internet says it's easier, Diana.

Diana Alt [00:42:24]:
The bots on the internet say it's easier. And too many people are listening to too much Gary Vee and Alex Hormozi. Um, yeah, both of whom I don't love. Um, why? So, well, Gary Vee is actually chilling out. Gary Vee is one of— I, I mean, for a long time he was the king of toxic hustle content. Um, and I just can't Even with the toxic hustle content. Um, Alex Hormozi uses a lot of language that makes people feel stupid. And like, he's done some cool stuff for himself, but I also know people that have been in the room with him.

Diana Alt [00:43:08]:
Like, I have, um, someone I know through entrepreneurial circles that did a challenge, and Alex was doing like the book launch that was the biggest book launch ever, and My friend helped promote this because he's got a large following. I saw that.

Karen Spies [00:43:23]:
I was there.

Diana Alt [00:43:24]:
Well, one of the things, if you were one of the top people, is that you actually got a mastermind day with Alex, right?

Karen Spies [00:43:31]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:43:31]:
And he was apparently a jackass. Yeah, at this. And my friend really liked him. So, and then I have another friend who has worked with Tony Robbins's team and like just some people that if you think about anything related to online business, the people that have been around for a decade plus and made jillions of dollars. She's worked directly with some of those people as a strategist. And, um, yeah, Alex is not one of the ones that she loved. So just didn't treat people well. So I would rather be around people that make close— have closer to the size of business that I have and make less money.

Diana Alt [00:44:12]:
But yeah, It's not easy to start a business. It's the hardest damn thing I've ever done, including being widowed. It is harder than being widowed at 34. I don't have any children, so I suspect that would have been harder, harder if I had kids. But because it's hard every day.

Karen Spies [00:44:32]:
Yeah. And the mirror is right there looking at you.

Diana Alt [00:44:34]:
It works for me, but I like it. And you have to stare all your own faults in the face every day. Um, and I have a lot of them. But on looking for a job, so do you have very many people that are talking about how hard it is that actually do want a job, or are they mostly saying, I'm out, I want to start there?

Karen Spies [00:44:55]:
No, they're, they're 100% saying, I'm out. I don't think I have anybody who has a job job that they didn't create themselves.

Diana Alt [00:45:05]:
You know what would be really interesting? is to put something on your calendar for like the Q3 of 2028 or 2029. Go back to your guests that swore they would never have a job again and they were going to do their own thing and see how many of them, one, got a job.

Karen Spies [00:45:26]:
Yeah. I mean, I think most of them are established. I don't think I have any of them that are like fresh out of the gate.

Diana Alt [00:45:33]:
That's good.

Karen Spies [00:45:34]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:45:35]:
So that would be a real fun conversation though.

Karen Spies [00:45:40]:
That's— oh no, it sounds sad.

Diana Alt [00:45:42]:
No. Um, but the thing is though, it could help, help some of your people that are contemplating the move.

Karen Spies [00:45:51]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:45:51]:
I mean, and that's one of them.

Karen Spies [00:45:52]:
That was the third thing, Diana. You hit it. What?

Diana Alt [00:45:56]:
Oh yeah. We had, you had 2 things.

Karen Spies [00:45:58]:
Inspire, highlight, And, um, fortify.

Diana Alt [00:46:03]:
Oh, fortify, like our cereal in the '80s?

Karen Spies [00:46:08]:
No, like Winnie the Pooh. It's fortification. But like, for people who are like, you know, I'm, I'm going into business for myself and why is it this fucking hard? Is it supposed to be this fucking hard? Is it me? But if they hear the stories of other people who are doing that. Other people who are like, oh, you know, all my friends told me that I was stupid for doing this and I did it anyway and it really sucked, but here's where I am now.

Diana Alt [00:46:40]:
How long have you been doing— because you basically have a digital marketing agency alongside your podcast— how long have you been doing that part of your work?

Karen Spies [00:46:48]:
Since, uh, 2013. Damn. Many years.

Diana Alt [00:46:55]:
How long have you been full-time in it? Is that— has it been the whole time?

Karen Spies [00:46:59]:
Okay. Yeah, since 2013.

Diana Alt [00:47:00]:
Because I knew when, like, I'm staring at your LinkedIn right now and you have stuff on there that—

Karen Spies [00:47:06]:
Yeah, I dipped out and did a job during COVID Well, yeah, yeah, people do that.

Diana Alt [00:47:12]:
So you were not the first and only person that did that. So I wondered if that was the case. That's a long time. I've been 7 years, um, which feels like a long time. And what did you do?

Karen Spies [00:47:27]:
I don't remember what you did before you, um—

Diana Alt [00:47:29]:
I was in tech for 20 years.

Karen Spies [00:47:32]:
And so in tech, what does that mean?

Diana Alt [00:47:34]:
Um, I mostly was in— I started my career in consulting, so I worked as a baby consultant for, um, a firm that was doing a lot of IT stuff because this was like right before the tech wreck. of the early 2000s. But I was doing like low-level project management, business analyst work, like that kind of stuff. I had to learn coding 'cause a lot of people that were my age going straight into consulting outta college were actually working on Y2K. They were basically making 2 bits into 4 bits or—

Karen Spies [00:48:12]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:48:13]:
with COBOL. I didn't— I had to learn some programming, but I did not do it that much early in my career. I spent most of my career in roles that were at the intersection of people, business, and technology. So product management, project management. I worked at a digital marketing agency for a while as an account manager, um, that kind of stuff. Because basically I see systems Right. And I care a lot about, are you actually solving the right problem in a way that actually solves the thing? So I made a career out of that. And in some ways, I feel like I do the same thing.

Diana Alt [00:48:54]:
It's just that I'm dealing with— instead of the messiness of business processes and technology systems, I'm focused more on the messiness of people. And in the 20 years that I was in corporate, more and more of my time was spent on things that the fancy corporate people would call like stakeholder management, relations, you know, internal relationship building. It's all the same stuff. It's dealing with messy-ass people.

Karen Spies [00:49:21]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:49:21]:
So now I just do that all the time.

Karen Spies [00:49:24]:
I mean, that sounds, that sounds great. I mean, that was kind of when I, when I was in corporate, that was basically what I ended up doing, like project management. You know, yeah, talking between, you know, the people in the marketing department who are like, we kind of want this. And the engineers are like, we have to have 15 different steps to do that. It's going to take us 4 months. And I'm like, well, what about steps 7, 9, and 10? Do we really need those? Well, we've always done those. Well, think about it. Do we really? Maybe we could do it without those.

Diana Alt [00:49:54]:
Yeah.

Karen Spies [00:49:55]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:49:55]:
Like I looked at it. I'm like, I can sell it if you really need them. I can sell it, but I need to know why. Yeah, just tell me. And it's always been that way. It was not an answer. So what kind of— what, what kind of stuff are you the most excited working on in your agency right now?

Karen Spies [00:50:17]:
You know, so I'm a frustrated— if you looked at my LinkedIn, you'll know I'm a frustrated designer slash artist. philosopher person. Bless your heart. So what I love doing the most is just creating new companies and making logos for them. Yeah, it's just the best.

Diana Alt [00:50:38]:
You make logos for fun? That's so cool.

Karen Spies [00:50:41]:
For fun, I make logos. It's insane.

Diana Alt [00:50:43]:
Most of them are— most people's logos are terrible. So yeah, some of my favorite TikTok content is people that tear apart bad logos. It makes me happy on the inside.

Karen Spies [00:50:54]:
I've seen, I've seen those. Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:50:56]:
Because I'm not a designer. I'm not a designer, but, um, I've got a family member that is and teaches design and she's great. Like she teaches in a high school program and one of her students in 2020 actually built my entire brand identity.

Karen Spies [00:51:14]:
Amazing.

Diana Alt [00:51:15]:
Then people turned around and were like, how much did you pay for that? And I'm like, nothing. Actually paid $500. I gave the kid $500 after he graduated. He wasn't allowed to take money while he was in school. Um, and then he went and like got a degree, a degree on a full ride at the KC Art Institute. So— Oh, are you from Kansas City?

Karen Spies [00:51:36]:
I forgot.

Diana Alt [00:51:36]:
Yeah, I'm over in Olathe. You're on the other side.

Karen Spies [00:51:40]:
Oh, I'm going to Olathe all the time. I'll be there later today.

Diana Alt [00:51:44]:
What, what are you doing over here?

Karen Spies [00:51:46]:
Um, my son got a job at T-Mobile corporate.

Diana Alt [00:51:49]:
Good for him.

Karen Spies [00:51:50]:
Yeah, but he doesn't drive, so—

Diana Alt [00:51:53]:
So you get to go tend to him. That's cool. Or not. You're giving me the I don't love driving face, but I love my son.

Karen Spies [00:52:02]:
I'm fine with driving. Oh, but I hate it every day, 9 to 5.

Diana Alt [00:52:08]:
No, no, no, no, pass. No thank you. Uh, yeah, I'm over in LA.

Karen Spies [00:52:14]:
That's cool. You gotta Scholarship to the Casey Art Institute. That's awesome.

Diana Alt [00:52:17]:
Yeah, he did. He was wonderful and had us pick jobs whenever we graduated. Where are you, in Lee's Summit or something, or did I dream that?

Karen Spies [00:52:25]:
No, I'm in the Northland.

Diana Alt [00:52:28]:
Oh, okay. Um, well, neat. I have a client, huh? Did I tell you that I have a client that found me on your podcast?

Karen Spies [00:52:41]:
No, congratulations.

Diana Alt [00:52:43]:
Yeah, I'll tell you after. I don't want to out the person, but I'll tell you after we stop recording. But yeah, she— I was like, where did you hear about me from? And she said, oh, on a podcast. I'm like, which? I thought she meant she'd heard my podcast. And she's like, you have a podcast? No, you were on my friend's podcast or this other podcast.

Karen Spies [00:53:02]:
So that's cool. That's so funny.

Diana Alt [00:53:05]:
Isn't that interesting?

Karen Spies [00:53:06]:
That's really Really awesome.

Diana Alt [00:53:09]:
Yeah.

Karen Spies [00:53:10]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:53:10]:
You, it's whenever we— did you end up starting your community? Like, we were emailing back and forth and you said something about you were trying to start a community up for corporate women that wanted to tap into creativity. Did, did that happen or, or am I thinking of the wrong person I talked to?

Karen Spies [00:53:27]:
I'm, I'm, I'm no, I'm definitely, that's where I'm going. That's where I'm going is basically, you know, combating burnout and overwhelm with creativity. Because I think that's the first thing to go when you get overwhelmed. Right.

Diana Alt [00:53:46]:
Yes, for sure.

Karen Spies [00:53:48]:
The ability to tap into yourself. Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:53:51]:
Yeah. And it's sometimes the only thing that keeps you sane. Um, I have a friend named Mike Brennan. who has made art almost every day for 14 years because—

Karen Spies [00:54:04]:
Amazing.

Diana Alt [00:54:05]:
Yeah, he went to art school for college somewhere along and he worked in graphic design. He's a great designer. And then he went into ministry and for like 10 years he was in ministry and did almost no art 'cause he was in the kids are little era and like all of that kind of stuff. And then at one point he left ministry, realized that he was, you know, depressed, didn't have himself, and started what he calls his daily creative habit. And it's really good. He has a cool pod— I'll send you a link to his podcast because I think you would enjoy listening to it. Yeah, I will. He's a good egg, and he's written a few books.

Diana Alt [00:54:47]:
He has a book called Dear Snow. One, I think the subtitle is One Man's Angry Rant Against Winter or something like that. It's hysterical.

Karen Spies [00:54:57]:
So he lives locally, is that what you're saying?

Diana Alt [00:54:59]:
No, he actually— no, he lived— he grew up in New Jersey.

Karen Spies [00:55:02]:
Oh, okay.

Diana Alt [00:55:03]:
Um, New York, New Jersey. He lives in Nashville now. He moved a couple years ago because he wanted to be around a different type of entrepreneurial community.

Karen Spies [00:55:12]:
So yeah, I mean, I lived in Boulder for so many years. It was a very different entrepreneurial community than there is here.

Diana Alt [00:55:19]:
Yeah.

Karen Spies [00:55:20]:
For real.

Diana Alt [00:55:20]:
It's a different vibe. The Kansas City, believe it or not, I have not tapped that much into the Kansas City entrepreneurial community because I left to work full-time as a coach just a little bit before COVID And so I was figuring, I left in June of 2019, I left corporate. And I spent a few months just decompressing from—

Karen Spies [00:55:48]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:55:49]:
Working 1 million years, including a lot of toxic stuff. And then I was like, okay, I'm doing— and I knew I was gonna work for myself. Like, I had no— I decided I was just done. It was time to bet on me. So I did technology consulting a lot for the first year and a half, and then I realized I hate— I just can't anymore. So I gave up that and turned all my attention into coaching and speaking and training and things like that. But by the time I really was hitting my stride, COVID hit. And I had figured out that I needed a community of people that were doing not corporate stuff.

Diana Alt [00:56:27]:
I needed to go—

Karen Spies [00:56:28]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:56:28]:
Anti everything that I had been doing and learn people that were working in this solopreneur, small business. I have a coaching or consulting, or I'm an author or speaker or whatever. And all the people I met were from out of town and it didn't matter for like 2 years. And then I was dealing with health stuff and now I'm like, I should leave the house more. I should put on hard pants. Um, there's actually a women— are you familiar with the Digital Women KC group? Have you heard of this?

Karen Spies [00:57:00]:
I think I looked it up on Meetup, but I don't know.

Diana Alt [00:57:05]:
One of my friends is the president of it. So, yeah.

Karen Spies [00:57:07]:
Okay.

Diana Alt [00:57:08]:
They actually are having a conference in September. Yeah. And yours truly is speaking at it. And it's like—

Karen Spies [00:57:15]:
Oh, well, I'll have to come to that.

Diana Alt [00:57:17]:
It's like $79. It's really inexpensive. I'll send you a link to it. So guys, this is what it's like to be on a networking call with me. I ask a bunch of questions and then I'm gonna send like 7 links to her.

Karen Spies [00:57:30]:
Yeah, just make sure you take notes.

Diana Alt [00:57:31]:
Um, I went to that recording, girl. I don't need to take notes.

Karen Spies [00:57:35]:
Oh, that's true. It'll take notes for you. I went to something at Union Station that was like small business, this or that, and they had people speaking. But I think I heard the first day was really good. Yeah, but I came on the second day and like there were a couple people speaking, but they have these great big classrooms and there was like 10 people in a room for 70.

Diana Alt [00:58:00]:
You know what, um, that's depressing.

Karen Spies [00:58:03]:
It was sad.

Diana Alt [00:58:05]:
Let me tell you an event that I went to that was surprisingly good. Um, well, surprise, I just didn't know very much about it. So I got approached, I actually moderated a panel at it. And then, you know, I announced, cause that's what we do when we're trying to get visibility. We tell people we're speaking at things and whatnot. I found out from a friend of mine that had keynoted the event a year or two before, like, no, that event is a banger. you need to go to it. The Junior League has an event.

Diana Alt [00:58:33]:
It was in April this year.

Karen Spies [00:58:35]:
I don't even know what that is.

Diana Alt [00:58:37]:
Is that like Rotary? The Junior League is basically like a service organization for women. OK. And it's an international organization. Like, one of my friends joined it, and I did a, I did a workshop for them like 3 years ago or something on CliftonStrengths. But one of my friends is a member and was on the conference committee, and I got invited to moderate a a panel on AI at work, which was pretty cool. And I kind of got to share expertise on the panel too, instead of just moderating, because there were no other solopreneurs in there. And there were a few people in the audience that had that.

Karen Spies [00:59:11]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:59:11]:
But it was a good— it was a good event. It was one day. It's called C3KC, and it stands for community. It's like civic community Oh, the 3— I don't know. I, I don't remember what the 3 C's are for, but the idea is to get people from different sectors together to talk about issues impacting the Kansas City metro. So you'd have government people.

Karen Spies [00:59:38]:
There's so many things happening here, you know. It's just—

Diana Alt [00:59:42]:
We are far cooler than people give us credit for.

Karen Spies [00:59:45]:
Oh my gosh. I think that they found out though. I think we got—

Diana Alt [00:59:49]:
Oh my God, the whole world found out. We did get outed by the World Cup, which is awesome. I was a big fan of that for a while. My favorite content on the internet was like random Algerians discovering burnt ends. That was really—

Karen Spies [01:00:07]:
I found a guy who was like, he was like a French guy, you know, and he's walking around, he's like, oh, America, this type of thing. And I looked up his other videos, he was not a French guy. He He was taking advantage of that.

Diana Alt [01:00:21]:
Well, that's a bummer. Um, yeah, I, I gotta love that, like, Scott sent a traffic cone to Boston. That was really funny. Um, the whole thing. And then FIFA had a halftime show for the final.

Karen Spies [01:00:38]:
I know, I've never had a halftime show. Yeah, I totally missed it.

Diana Alt [01:00:42]:
It's on YouTube.

Karen Spies [01:00:43]:
Okay, I'll, I'll have to look that up.

Diana Alt [01:00:45]:
It's on YouTube. It's like 12 minutes long and you don't have to watch the soccer part.

Karen Spies [01:00:49]:
So I like the soccer part, although I already know what happens now.

Diana Alt [01:00:53]:
I'm not really into the soccer part, but I do enjoy that Electric Mayhem was part of the halftime show, aka the band from the Muppets, for those of you that are not familiar.

Karen Spies [01:01:06]:
Oh, Dr. Teeth and Electric Mayhem.

Diana Alt [01:01:09]:
Oh yeah, Animal playing. Oh yeah, Animal. Fozzie was missing. I thought Fozzie was in that band.

Karen Spies [01:01:15]:
I hear he's in Florida.

Diana Alt [01:01:21]:
Oh my God, this is fun playing the circuit in Florida. I think eventually I gotta go back to work. I don't know about you, but I gotta tell you what I wanna— I wrote some stuff down and I wanna ask you about it, kind of the close. We started talking about content creation and I would love to end talking about it. So we produce a lot. When you produce a podcast, even if you don't go hard, that by definition is a lot of content. Like if you're doing a podcast every week, it's a lot of content.

Karen Spies [01:01:53]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [01:01:54]:
How are you thinking about creating for an audience versus creating conversation? Because I think that this is like the I think this is the battle that people are going through when they think about doing a podcast or any other type of social media content, but they don't want to be gross. So when you are doing your podcast, are you thinking about how do I make my audience the most interested or pull in more audience more? Or are you thinking about how do I have the most interesting conversation for me and the other person more? Like, how do you think about that?

Karen Spies [01:02:41]:
Truthfully, I mean, as I'm writing synopsises for these little synopses, um, for these little clips, like, I, I kind of go in between. I, I tend to definitely pick dramatic moments. And the woman who turned sideways, like, she told me—

Diana Alt [01:03:00]:
That's hysterical.

Karen Spies [01:03:02]:
That was hysterical. But she told the story about how Her husband used to do, uh, April Fool's pranks on her every year. And he did it. He had her sign herself into a mental institution and she thought it was an April Fool's prank. She was literally having a psychotic break. I mean, so like, it's, it's not like it was malicious or anything.

Diana Alt [01:03:27]:
Wow.

Karen Spies [01:03:28]:
But, but that got so much traction because it was like, Oh, it's amazing.

Diana Alt [01:03:34]:
It's amazing for that. And I would— God, I wouldn't even think about the clips part of it. I— when I do a clip, I'm just trying to find something. I am trying to find tension and I'm trying to make my guests look good. Um, I have a friend that—

Karen Spies [01:03:46]:
Yeah, always. Yeah.

Diana Alt [01:03:47]:
He's like a YouTube and digital influence expert. And he hollered at me and he's like, you need to pull more clips that make you look smart. And I was like, but I want my friend Karen to look smart. And he's, you know, it's like 2 things can be true at the same time, Diana. Come on.

Karen Spies [01:04:03]:
Yeah, no, I'm really pulling like the most dramatic moments because I, I know that those are going to get views and I know that people are going to get value from them because like, you know, I'm talking about mold, you know, how mold gets in your— I've started, you know, making these more hooky titles. for the clips, you know, mold in your body, you know, the woman who—

Diana Alt [01:04:28]:
you don't want that.

Karen Spies [01:04:29]:
It's like, huh?

Diana Alt [01:04:31]:
You don't want mold in your body. Spoiler alert. No, you don't want mold in your body.

Karen Spies [01:04:35]:
But this woman, she's like a— she was a theoretical physicist. Again, backstory. I didn't even know what that was.

Diana Alt [01:04:44]:
Right.

Karen Spies [01:04:45]:
But that's, you know, like, so, so yeah.

Diana Alt [01:04:48]:
So you're trying to— you're, you are trying to find things that are going to be A moment of tension. Yeah. I like to just see what's— I've, I feel like I'm throwing spaghetti at a wall, but not in a bad way.

Karen Spies [01:05:05]:
But you're not looking at analytics, right?

Diana Alt [01:05:08]:
I mean, you, you can just by virtue of notifications on your device, you figure out if some things—

Karen Spies [01:05:14]:
You have notifications on? Oh my God.

Diana Alt [01:05:16]:
Some things get— TikTok does not get notifications on because you never know what the hell is going on over there. No, I love TikTok. It is my second favorite platform right now.

Karen Spies [01:05:27]:
Yeah, but I love it too.

Diana Alt [01:05:28]:
I can't have the Red Bubbles on TikTok. I can't do it, mostly because comments, honestly, because of my comments. I had a comment I made on something the, like, yesterday or the day before that has like 7,000 hearts on it. I'm like, I don't, I don't need, I don't, I don't need all that. On my phone because I'm like a no red bubbles kind of person. I can't—

Karen Spies [01:05:54]:
What's red bubbles?

Diana Alt [01:05:55]:
Red bubbles on your phone, like with number in it. Like you have stuff to do. To me, if I look at— if I look at my email box and it has a red bubble with a 7 in it, that means that I have 7 things to do. So, right, and 6 of them are going to be deleting, which is awesome. Can I throw out my Do you have a question, like a standard question that you ask on every episode? I have one before we close, but do you have anything like that as part of your show?

Karen Spies [01:06:25]:
My standard question is, so how can people— how do people normally work with you?

Diana Alt [01:06:29]:
Oh, okay. I'll answer. I'll answer that and then you can answer it too. And then I'll ask mine. So people can— I work with people mostly one-on-one. I do occasionally do workshops and things like that. And I have a lot of free content out there, even above the podcast. So if someone is looking for a coach, whether it is for help with a job search/resume or with like ongoing career development, and even I do some small business consulting, any of that that's going to make their work life better, the best thing to do is go to dianaalt.com and there's a book intro call button there and we can, you can get on my calendar and we can talk about it.

Diana Alt [01:07:10]:
Um, what about you? I also have a newsletter. So if you hit the— if you go to my website and hit the green Let's Connect button, you'll get on that. You'll get the podcast announcements and my very entertaining weekly emails. What about you? How do people work with you?

Karen Spies [01:07:27]:
Uh, people normally work with me either through, you know, obviously the podcast. I mean, that's more of a— that's more of a connection kind of thing. But I found it to be infinitely useful when people are like, You know, oh, who's Karen? And then I'm sure people say, who's Diana? And they look up and they, and they're like, oh, I get, I get, I get it. I get you, what your vibe is. Um, really the best way to connect with me is through my website. It's spiez because I cannot buy spies.com.

Diana Alt [01:08:02]:
Um, so crazy, too expensive.

Karen Spies [01:08:06]:
Um, so I work a lot with people on branding, Websites. Uh, I've worked with— traditionally worked with a lot of small businesses, moving more now into kind of what I'm doing with the podcast, which is talking with people about what their transitions are and how those are working for them.

Diana Alt [01:08:27]:
And that's cool, especially in a business, because when people are— there's nothing harder than— the only thing harder than starting a business is pivoting an existing business, I think. So it's so hard. If you can become like the pivot specialist marketing person, like that's a big deal because it's hard marketing and it's hard operationally. Um, well, that's cool. Well, my last question that I always ask everyone and hopefully get a good clip out of is what's the worst piece of career advice you've ever received?

Karen Spies [01:09:01]:
The worst piece of career advice I've ever received. I don't— I think the worst piece of career advice was something I gave myself, which is when I was—

Diana Alt [01:09:12]:
Yes, this is juicy. Go for it.

Karen Spies [01:09:15]:
When I was really, really burnt out, you know, when I'd been through a couple of rounds of new directors and I was like, you know, just buckle down, it'll get better. You know, like, You know, all this, this, once the project is over, it will get better.

Diana Alt [01:09:39]:
Once the project is over, there's going to be another project is really what happens. So yeah, I do have a tip on that for people that are listening. If they felt that way, I got this from a friend years ago that said he had a 6-month rule. And he was a highly talented software engineer and architect like this guy, especially at the time he told me about it. He could raise his hand on a Monday saying, I want a new job, and have like a killer new job making a shit ton more money by Friday. He's that guy. But he didn't want to be too reactionary, so he created a 6-month rule and said, from the date I'm really feeling like unhappy, not just like this is annoying, but like, um, I don't know that this works anymore, he will literally put a reminder on his calendar for 6 months from then to say, like, are you still unhappy? And if he is, then he— then and only then would he start a job search.

Karen Spies [01:10:37]:
Wow.

Diana Alt [01:10:37]:
And I thought that was so good because if it's not resolved in 6 months or you haven't been able to figure out how to take whatever is wrong and, like, change your own self to make it work, whether— so change can happen either way, you or the company.

Karen Spies [01:10:54]:
Right.

Diana Alt [01:10:54]:
Then it's not gonna, or it's time to cut your losses. I thought that was great.

Karen Spies [01:11:00]:
Well, 6 months is a long time.

Diana Alt [01:11:02]:
Well, I mean, pick a number though, but it keeps you from like doing the ugly quit or whatever. So make it 3 months, make it whatever, but like pick an amount of time that is a little bit of delayed gratification for that. Unless it's like, you know, if you have an ethics problem, if people are going to go to jail, You know, like, then quit immediately. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Karen. I'm so glad we get to do this, and the world gets twice as much because we're going to release these the same week. See how that goes. It's a fun experiment.

Diana Alt [01:11:34]:
I'm excited.

Karen Spies [01:11:36]:
Yeah, I'm excited too.

Diana Alt [01:11:37]:
And I hope everybody sticks around. Go listen to Second Wind Women. Yes, good show. Listen more to Diana's.

Karen Spies [01:11:44]:
I, I was checking out your Um, I was checking out your, all your podcasts and I was like, damn, I don't have enough time to listen to all these.

Diana Alt [01:11:52]:
Well, you know, you don't have to listen to all of them. I can, I will curate a recommended list for you. Once I'm done, I'll, I'll give you some suggestions.

Karen Spies [01:12:01]:
All right.

Diana Alt [01:12:02]:
That's it, guys. We'll see you next time. Want some more career goodness between episodes? Head on over to dianaalt.com and smash the big green Let's Connect button to sign up for my newsletter. Let's make work feel good together. And that's it for this episode of Work Should Feel Good. If something made you laugh, think, cry, or just want to yell yes at your phone, send it to a friend, hit follow, hit subscribe, do all the things. And even better, leave a review if you've got a sec. I'm not going to tell you to give it 5 stars.

Diana Alt [01:12:38]:
You get to decide if I earned it. Work should feel good.

Karen Spies [01:12:41]:
Let's make that your reality.

Diana Alt [01:12:42]:
Work should feel good. Let's make that your reality.