Karl Dettmann went from being called “the Robot” in high school and college to a friendly, excited, fun loving “golden retriever” now. Learn how he got out of his head and learned to express and process his emotions. Karl Dettmann talks about how he is creating HIS story and why it is important to understand that being a human today is so different than it was 100, 50 even 30 years ago.
Bio: Karl Dettmann is a successful entrepreneur who started his first tech business at the age of 12 which he grew and sold portions of then started a second business with his twin brother at age 20 and sold it 4 years later for a substantial profit. After spending 3 years in the corporate world Karl realized that he wanted to create his own life and that meant his own business so he chose to become a wealth management advisor at Northwestern Mutual. He now owns a vineyard, a restaurant and does amazing things like 4 month road trips in his RV/office, boat surfing, e-foiling, rafting, remote biking, rock climbing, beekeeping and who knows what else.
Transcript
Stephen Christopher 0:00 Hey, what's going on Stephen Christopher here with my co host, Laura Sanchez for today's episode of the exciting unknown podcast. And as always, oh wait every single time we have an absolutely amazing guest for you today. Our guest today started his first tech based company when he was 12. Grew that to a very substantially successful company, ended up kind of selling a piece of it, and then grew a little bit more and then ended up exiting out of that. And then started another company with his twin brother ran that till he was about 24 years old. And thought after college, hey, you do what do what we're supposed to do, let's go get a corporate job and like, enter the real world. And kind of like my background, felt or found out that that was not the path that he wanted to be on. And so went into financial services, where he has been extremely successful in that route. And those are all really great. Really cool things and things to be extremely proud of. But I think one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to interview this person today is because he's probably one of the most present, and life loving humans that I've ever met anywhere on the planet. And it's he's living proof that you can be very successful in the business world, and also very successful in the life and fulfillment and personal expression and personal growth world. And that's what I'm really excited about. And he inspires me all the time to live a much better life on both sides of that equation. So, without further ado, Carl dettman Welcome to the show. Unknown Speaker 1:48 Great to be here, that is high praise. And I'm excited to be able to hopefully share some nuggets with you guys today. So yeah, pleasure to be here. Stephen Christopher 1:58 Awesome, man. So For those, for those of you that don't know, Carl, which is probably most of you, like I said in the intro, I mean, Carl fully lives life. I mean, just earlier this year, unfortunately, before COVID hit but before this year, took off in an RV and was planning, you're planning on spending four months on the road, while still working full time and while being able to explore life and deepen. I don't know, I guess, would you say the relationship with yourself and with others? Unknown Speaker 2:30 Yeah, absolutely. I, I live in Wisconsin. So it's not you don't have to twist somebody's arm too hard to leave for the winner. But most of us just feel like we're stuck. You know, wherever you are. You just have to be there. And so I just looked at this and, like, you know what, I mean, worst case scenario, I give it a shot and I can always return back home. And so I decided to hit the road. And it was interesting. As I was leaving, I was just like, I knew I was going to meet magical people. I knew magical things were going to happen. I just didn't know when and where and So it was just this thing of just trusting that, you know, the universe provides and so I set off and had some friends like I stopped out and spent a little time being with you. And just knew that through being around and just bringing some good energy that cool things would happen and sure enough, it was pretty awesome. So now it's something that that instead was this past year. I started it in in December this year. I'm gonna do the same thing starting in November. So it's, it's an experiment that was a success, and I'm looking forward to getting to do it again. Stephen Christopher 3:34 That's awesome, man. So were you were you always like this Did you always Well, actually, and I forgot to mention this so this is self proclaimed. I pulled this from Carl himself, but I've seen it proven true and true again, Carl, I don't know if you remember this. What you probably do you told me once that you basically wake up in the morning like a golden retriever about just super excited for the day like what's gonna happen today. Oh my gosh, think we can do this. We could do this we could do this, like, just just super pumped for the day. And one, I want to make sure that that's true. I quoted that correctly. But to Have you always been like that, or is that something that was learned? And then when was that? Unknown Speaker 4:15 Yeah, I think so we all have our natural state, like one of the things I've been really leaning into just accepting is how people show up in every person on the planet is different. Some people literally are, are Richard Simmons, happy, you know, some people, you know, their happiness is, you know, not as vibrant. And that's and I think in society, we assign a meaning that happy is better. And let's say maybe a little more stoic is not. And for me, I've been trying to find a lot more joy and just embracing where people are at for myself. When I really allowed myself to just be what I felt like My natural energy it's real happy and so then it's actually it's interesting at times to me because I'll wake up and literally the first thing I feel in the morning is just like happiness like before my eyes open up like the computer boots up and I'm just like could take another day and I know that is I know that I'm on the higher end of the scale of that and and i don't fight it and so there was points in my life where I fought it because I felt like it was just not the normal like with you're around people that were struggling but then I came to this realization and this is actually something with you know, the the economic climate of 2020 and COVID is I'm like it doesn't serve the world for me to play down my vibrancy. And so if I look at just the fact that I'm happy dude. I feel that the that I benefit and I feel that the world benefits by just me sticking with what my genuine state is. And so, for me, it is eerie how, how positive I've used things that is I'm sure some of your people are listening this podcast have done the strengthsfinder by Stephen Covey where they, you know, list out your top five strengths. Well, my number two strength is positivity. And so it just, it just comes out naturally and I just don't fight it. So Stephen Christopher 6:15 did you? Have you always been like that or like going back to when? I don't know, when you were younger when you're in college when you're starting these companies or just even in life in general? Did you fight it more? or? Unknown Speaker 6:28 Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean, to give you a little. So usually, I always say anybody who, you know, starts a company when they're young, or whatever else either you had an exceptionally blessed childhood where your parents just paved the way and were such big advocates for you to like, put yourself out there. Or there was challenges and when we look at this for me, my childhood just had challenges. You know, I was a I'm an identical twin, which is its own whole host. If you have two twin boys, that usually means a lot of energy. A lot of competition. But also for me, I didn't, I didn't know and my parents, which they are wonderful human beings, they didn't know how to give me like the freedom to have range of expression, meaning it's just like so my happiness, like if I showed that I was happy, it could typically turn into actually a hospital situation. And so what I learned, as you know, we're Early Middle School and the high school it was just better to literally not show any emotions and not. So somebody asked me how things were going, it was just fine. It was it, it was not good or bad because the environment I was in as if I showed emotions, it just wasn't safe. And so for a long period of my life, how I escaped my world and found some safety was through making money and being competitive in sports. And so for me, that's, that's a part of the reason why I delve really deep into starting My companies and working my companies, I would leave the house at, you know, I leave the house at 530 in the morning, and I get home at 1030 at night. And there's been a huge unwinding of things that and in this way it works for most people if we get an opportunity to, there's a huge unwinding of things that we learned before we had the ability to think there's a huge unwinding of things that like that our you know, our family or our community taught us and they're not bad. They're they allowed us to fit in, they allowed us to, to survive. And then as an adult, and thankfully for me, as a young adult, I got an opportunity to really dive in deep and start to just unwind and so for me, my one of my nicknames in high school was the robot. And so it literally it was because because people just like he just doesn't show any emotions, it doesn't feel or express any emotions and those people that know me now they're like, I wonder what that would have been like. But for me, it was interesting to live in a world where eventually I just said, You know what, I see people having emotion. And something is going on with me that I don't get to share that. And I'm like, it seems like there's something cool about this, it seems like there's something about emotions, whether it be happiness or sadness, or joy. And so I literally worked with a therapist for a couple years on learning to embrace and accept emotions. And the more that I accepted emotions, the more rewarding it became. It was as if I was watching standard desktop television. And the more I learned what even sorrow felt like, it went from, you know, standard definition to high definition to ultra high definition. And so because of that, it really became a very for me, it became very rewarding and like to give you an interesting to dating this girl, and one day, so like, how you doing? And I'm like, I'm really sad, and I'm like, but it just feels so good to feel sad, and I'm like, doesn't feel good to feel sad. And she's like, no, it does not feel good to feel sad. And I'm like, I thought about I'm like, Well, I guess when you have comparison of what feeling nothing feels like feeling anything feels better than feeling nothing. And we actually talked about it. And she's like, Well, that makes a lot of sense. And so, so I guess my perspective might be a little bit different. But yeah, definitely, from where I was in high school to where I am today has definitely been a journey of learning. And one of those things was emotions, for sure. Stephen Christopher 10:18 Was that was that scary for you? Like when you started to, one learn that you could show more emotion? Or how to show more emotion or how to experience more emotion? Like, what was your self talk during that time, like some basically what I'm getting at is for somebody else that's kind of like the robot, right, which I think a lot of us either are, are the robot today, or at least we still have parts of us that are that robot to different levels. So how, you know, how would you help buddy kind of start to get through that when it is really uncomfortable? Unknown Speaker 10:55 Yeah, yeah, a couple thoughts. So for me I so extremely shoved down any emotions that it's like the more extremely you do it, something's going to give the dam is going to burst. And so for me, I remember like the two things that I experienced in life was numb and test. And so like 99 of the time was numb and 1% of time was pissed. And I and I, and I asked myself and this what I asked myself all the time as I go, what do I want my story to be? So if I look at this, I'm like the story of Carl, what do I want my story to be. And that is something that has been super consistent with, with even every interaction I have with people where if I look at this, if I can operate out of kindness and love, or something isn't necessarily feeling the way that I want it to feel, I say, this is what I want this my story to be. And so with that I because I wasn't in my body, I was literally in my head that when you look at this, like the emotions are in your body, they're always there. So the only way not to feel them and that I had to be in my head. And so my brain drove it. But I said, Is this what I want my story to be? And the answer was no. And so That became a bit of a driving force. The other thing too, which and I bet you there's plenty of people on this podcast that have contemplated taking their life in the past. You know, I looked at this and I had success I had money I had was very successful in my career was swimming, I swim all the way through college and was good at it. But literally, i times i times i woke up. And I thought to myself, I'm like, I just wonder if I'd even be missed if I wasn't here anymore. And I look at this and like, you know, it might just be easier to just not be here anymore. And I looked at this and I was just like, that's again, not what I want my story to be that doesn't feel that didn't. Something didn't click, it just didn't seem like that was the reason why I was here. Unknown Speaker 12:41 And so with that, there was some scary aspects to it, but it was it wasn't more scared. It was more. I didn't want that to be my story. And for me, it was my I always feel like if you can, if you want to change something, oftentimes people think two things. One, they think that if I change it, I can't go back. Which I always think is interesting. I'm like, Well, if you know how things are, and you try an experiment, you can always go back to the way things were like I can always go back. And so I figured if I could create safety, for change by just taking little teeny pieces, that that would that would be helpful because if we look at any change if people if people feel safe change is much easier. And so I had to figure out how could I find safety and in this case, it was I can always go back to being numb and being passed. And that's, that's something I knew how to do. The other thing though, too, was with my therapist, we identified a safe place because because for most people, if they really are honest with themselves, most of their world might be hostile. And so that means that they don't have a safe work in home. If and when we're talking about safe I mean like, safe for for a baby like like, like safe for a newborn. And child to be in. Because if we haven't worked on ourselves, some parts of us are still a newborn child. And if you want to conjure that out, you got to have a really safe environment. So for me, thankfully, my car was always a safe place for me. And it's interesting because you'll talk to people that I struggle with the same thing. And I can always ask this question anyone who enjoys getting on a plane for work or whatever else, they love the first 10 minutes of the plane plane ride. Typically I look at them like they never thought about why you like the first time as a plane ride and when we get to is because they're unreachable. You know, usually it says I can't move the world can't touch me for 10 minutes. I'm like, Man, that seems like a hostile place to be and and usually that ends up being a wake up call to saying, Well, if we like 10 minutes on an airplane, when we're unreachable, can we just create a world like that? And have some safety, not just to get on a flight and just kind of escape our life for a little bit. And so for me, fortunately, my car was a safe place and so I'm not kidding you is I'm like 19 years old, my therapist, like the role is listen to music until you feel emotions. And so I mean, I'm listening to like Alanis Morissette, like it literally was like, black when you listen to like r&b. I'm like, I'm like a dude successful business owner. I'm listening to Sarah McLaughlin's arms, the angel. And eventually I'm just say that I'm just weeping in my car. And the first emotion I did feel was sorrow. And but it took another, it took me nine months of sitting in my car for about an hour a day, just listening to just music to try and conjure out emotions before I started feeling. And so it wasn't a one day process. This was something where I just let go, and I was like, This is my Ras time. This is my meditation time. Bear in mind, I didn't know what meditation was at that point. But I just knew that if I cut out an hour a day, to just sit in my car, listen to music, and it was a safe place and eventually the motion started coming and then once they started coming, I had the proper support so I had some some good friends that felt safe. To me, and I have that that therapist that was saved to me as well. And then it allowed me to process those emotions that came up. So Stephen Christopher 16:08 yep. That's awesome, man. And you know what? to pinpoint something here that you were doing this for nine months, an hour a day? Because I know I mean, for me in the past, and for a lot of people, we think, Oh, well, I'll work on this. It's important for me to work on this, right, this, you know, emotional states and how to be more fulfilled. It's important. But for most of us, it's not important to do it for more than 10 minutes a day. A couple days a week, hour a week. Yeah. And so therapists an hour week, and yeah, yeah, and this is in addition to what you're doing with your therapist. So I want to anchor that point, because it's so important, and we often forget that it takes time to work on the things that are ultimately important that are going to have these really, really big impacts on us and But yet a lot of times it's the first thing to fall off, right? It's like, Okay, well do I get up and do work? You know, a lot of people that listen to this show are entrepreneurs. And we're like, you know, they, they got to go to work. Right? You got it. Yeah, I got to do this. I got to do that. But I mean, I know, at least for me on my journey, just really in the last couple years, kind of on some of the same stuff that you're talking about, Carl, I mean, it takes it takes intentional time and energy and effort, but the payoff is so well worth it. Unknown Speaker 17:32 Mm hmm. Totally. Totally. Yep. Did Stephen Christopher 17:38 Did you tell me if I remember the story, correct. Didn't you use to go like sit in a park or sit like outside as well? in kind of, like a presence exercise was that you and I that were talking about that? Unknown Speaker 17:53 Yeah, yeah. And I and I still do that. And that you always have like this. Oh, and we'll get you up. Working on your business and you have working in your business. And this can be and this is not only a great good quote is how we do one thing is how we do all things. So if you ever if you ever I mean, like I can tell you, one of the roles I play is I'm a button pusher for people. So it's like if I get someone doing something that I don't feel is serving them well in one area of life. Usually it means it's how we're doing in all areas of life. So if we can figure it and I would say that if you can figure out how to set up healthy loving boundary with those that are closest to you, you can do it everywhere else in life, meaning it's like so for me, I work in the finance space. And if I can set boundaries or set a new environment up with a client's that's like the first step like that, like the closer we get the usually this we feel that the stakes are higher. And so let me we So long story short, is I when I talk to people, usually I look at this and say let's set aside. For me, this would be an afternoon, once a month, to work on my business, to work to work on my business versus in my business. And so what I found was that I went through and I love nature is that if I literally was no technology, so no phone, it's just a notebook and a pen. And you just find a place to sit down and then you just start letting your mind wander. And typically, at first, it starts with writing out your to do list like it's like the brain dump, we'll just get all the things out that we think we need to do people we want to call whatever else and then eventually, you just start sitting there and like, I feel like this. I'm like, when we want to dive into our inner psyche, that's like, master level stuff. Typically, if we can dive into business, that's a good entry point. So as an entrepreneur, we can develop a healthy business culture, a healthy business environment, that actually becomes a lot easier for us than modifying our personal life. And so for me, it was like I was like, I'm gonna focus on how I can run my business really well be really good, a good boss, to my employees, how I can be good to my clients. And about an hour and a half into the exercise other than just enjoying being in nature. It was interesting how the gold started coming out. But it was like, it always baffled me how much was just in there. If I just took a couple hours, I'm working in my business, you know, and I, and I love what I do. And so there's times where I'm working 20 hours a week, there's times we're working 100 hours a week, and only if I'm taking, you know, four hours a month to work on my business. And there was just amazing things that came out of it that helped my business become a lot more successful and a lot easier to run. Conversely, then it was like, Okay, what can I do to help this in my personal life as well. But business I found is way easier to work on them personal is, at least for me, so. Yeah, Stephen Christopher 20:39 yeah, I think for a lot of us, especially that, you know, the ad HD entrepreneur, right, it's easier to start with business and not always necessarily look at some of the much deeper personal things. I know for me, that's I started in very similar ways. Like I'll start with a business thought. And if I sit there long enough, it'll end up in a 15 page. journal entry about how I'm how my ego is like tricking me into thinking that certain things are true that really aren't. Right? Because we know that our who we are shows up in our business all the time, right day in and day out. We may not see it as that we may see it as an external problem, whether it's people problem or process problem, or I'm not making enough money, but in reality, that's a reflection of where we are personally. Yeah. Yeah. And I love that. You know, I love with you, Carl, how you're living proof that by working on yourself, it exponentially increases all of the other pieces of life, which includes business, you know, a more successful business or at least a more intentional business to where you're able to make more money, actually physically do less time, while all at the same time getting more fulfillment and more joy Out of life. I mean, if you know Carl, I obviously see your like your Facebook stories, because I sharing stuff that he's doing right and he lives on a big who would you call it a vineyard, right? Unknown Speaker 22:12 And a vineyard. Yeah. He Stephen Christopher 22:15 has a vineyard lives there and has all of this space and you know every day It seems like there's like okay like today is wakeboarding today is foil skiing today is building a tree house today is like running with your dog. I keep chickens like keeping the bees but all of this in conjunction with running a exponentially growing successful business at the same time. Unknown Speaker 22:43 Yeah, absolutely. Here you are correct. Do you want me to pontiff if you want me to pontificate on that for a little bit? I think it's it was interesting. I was having a really nice conversation with my girlfriends and that's this past weekend and we were just Talking about community and leaning into your community, and how, instead of 1000 times over again, what do we want our story to be. And when we look in business, if I try and maintain control of all of the things like even leave, it really goes like, so like I have a vineyard and there's lots of things on that vineyard, lots of animals, it's 100 acres of land. And I like building things like right now, one of these I'm building is a tree house. And, and so if I tried to be involved in everything that was going on, like I own a restaurant, I have a financial services business. There's lots of other activities. If I tried to be involved in everything that was going on, I would be overwhelmed. I'd be hurried and stressed. And one of the things that I view is that my role is to have capacity and so if I look at this, my role is to help empower My employees to be able to do their roles successfully. And there is art and how and doing that. And so thankfully, over the years I have been able to work with and maintain some really healthy relationships with some key employees. That that makes sure most of the most of the stuff that consumes people day in and day out existence. Fortunately, it has been delegated. And so when we look at ourselves, and what do we want our story to be if I want to impact and then this thing is interesting, and we always say, well, Pete, you know, a person, how much impact on the planet Do you want to have? And people will be like, well, I want to have Do you want to impact one person? Or do you want to impact 1000 or a million? And people be like, well, if I can impact a million I you know, a lot of people would say I'd want to impact a million or more. And so we look at this, if I have to be involved in every single thing that impacts other people. I can only my span of control only goes so far. And the other thing too I look at like my role having capacity. Unknown Speaker 25:04 I truly do think it's very important. And if we think of an analogy, I don't know if you guys do you guys do you know back in the day when you have kings kingdoms, and you had kings and queens and if I use the term fiefdom, I'm sure some of the viewers don't know to feed them. So feed them is the people who live inside the kingdom. So so what happens is, if we look at this, I feel that each person has their own universe, so I am my own universe, even in his own universe, Laura, you're your own universe. And we have people that choose to be in our universe, our friends, our family, our colleagues, our clients. And they're effectively if we look at their in our kingdom. And if we look at what type of King do I want to be, and I'll paint this example there's two types of kings. King, he loves his people, and he spends his days in the fields working with his people hand in hand. He knows them all by name. He gives himself it tirelessly, every Single Day and that people love him. And that's King a, King B is one that he spends more time reserving energy, he spends more time spending things on thinking about and delegating out to different people. So he doesn't know all of the people in the field and by name, he doesn't know, he's not working the fields on a daily basis. But he still runs a good kingdom and the people love him. And we look at this and I say, you know, a witch King, are you most people would say the king a, they're the ones that are working day in and day out tirelessly. But like I say, what is the role of a king ultimately, it's to provide for his people. And one of the biggest things back in the day was safety. If you're exhausted, and then a famine hits, your people die, if you're exhausted because you've exhausted everything you have and invader comes in. You have no more capacity and energy to combat that Vader invader and your kingdom is taken over. And so when I look at this in life in general, if we're not creating an environment where we have like, at least for my role, if I view myself as a Can I view myself as having this feast, um, that I want to serve? Well, I it was interesting, it took a long time for me to work through all of unwinding of the stories because we're taught that, oh, that's selfish, it's selfish to, to be able to keep your capacity. And but what I found is is that now like I look at this, like I most of my clients, so from a work side of thing, I helped do financial planning for business owners. And you'll notice they have stuff that comes up you look at this past year and their businesses needing to close and pivot and all this other type of stuff. And if all of my capacity is sucked up, just running my own business, then how much capacity Do I have to help advise my clients on what to do how to take advantage of different financial packages, what to do with their employees, you know, HR issues and all that type of stuff. And I can tell you that that like this year, it was funny because people said like, how you doing and I'm like, amazing, because this is what I prepped for like the last 10 years things have been gravy, right? So I'm like my role as the King was to plan and prep and have the storehouse is ready. For my family and for my friends and for my clients, and it's interesting to me because it was like, I'm kind of sitting here doo doo doo doo doo 10 years, and this year has been a year I'm like, Yes. Like, it's like I look at this because I'm like, I'm able to help people when it when it really matters. And it's been very fulfilling to do that. And it's been a good affirmation that being that King that has capacity. That's the king. That's the kingdom I want to live in. Stephen Christopher 28:27 Dude, I love that. Do you ever? Do you ever get fearful or have like uncertainty pop up? And if so are when it does? What? What do you tell yourself? What's that conversation like? Unknown Speaker 28:43 Yeah, so the answer is absolutely. Unknown Speaker 28:48 And I feel like if we don't have if we don't have some fear, and we use the term fear or uneasiness then we're probably Well, I would say for myself, I feel that that I was created to be a pioneer. And I was created to, to push growth. And that's, that's growing like, for me a lot of that growth right now is just personal growth, how to be a good steward of this planet. And so I feel that if we're not having some fear, then that means we're probably not giving yourself enough motivation to grow. Now, that being said, I'm not going to say that it's for everybody, but I know for me, that that I'll always have some fears or some concerns going on, and how you deal with it. And I'll give you an example over the last couple years. And I remember in so for anybody who has a large enough enterprise, at some point in time, you might get blackmailed. Or you might get stopped. And so I have had over the years, I've had a number of people choose to try and blackmail or a stock with the intention of trying to not be a kind person. And I always say this, like hurt people, hurt people. And so for me, it's been in exercise to hold compassion in that space. But that being said, I, you know, at first I looked at this and said, I'm just going to hide under a rock and just hide, you know, I'm just going to try and hide from the world and then people just leave me alone. And then again after, and it was about a year and a half, after the first round of people, you know, that people, some people I didn't even know never even met and trying to send you letters in the mail saying you don't pay him money, they're gonna say bad things about you. And, and I work in the finance industry, you know, look at that, that is a very highly regulated industry. And so for me, but then after about a year, I was like, is this really again, what I want my story to be? And the answer was not and so. Unknown Speaker 30:42 So with that I ended up Unknown Speaker 30:46 not hiding in but the look of this. There's there's many different ways to deal with and how I dealt with it was is by establishing good relationships with the regulator's establishing good relationships with law enforcement, establishing good relationships with these people saying hey, This is what I'm experiencing. You know, can you can you can can we establish a relationship here so that way that the next time it comes up then then then it can be handled, and it can be handled in a way that I don't feel like I need to hide anymore and surprisingly enough I feel like that's like when you choose love when you choose kindness even for the people who may be trying to destroy you love wins like it does and it doesn't usually win like this. There's the battle and there's the war, right? It may not win the battle right? Your your life might be might be sucky because you got to jump on a call with some attorneys for a little bit. gotta figure out stuff but the end when the chips fall down and all is done. I feel like that that love and kindness and compassion does win. And so for me, I looked at this and said, okay, because well when you think of fear and concerns, like I have fears and concerns, let's say like that live within me but not only this, and maybe there's something I still need to work on. I have no control over. If someone tries to blackmail me, I have no control over if someone tries to stop me, you know, I can build a bigger fence around my house in my life, but it's like, do I really want to do that? And so for me, I looked at this and just that with that fear, the fear was that you know, I would lose my my career, I would lose my licenses, I would lose my house, I would lose all of these things. But I still looked at this and said, so I have two choices. One, I can live a muted down version of my life I can hide and I cannot impact the world in the way that I felt like I was supposed to. or two I can live and be very vibrant. And I do run in bear in mind, I run the risk either way, I could lose all of those things, but but I still know that I have me. And I and I looked within the depths of my soul. And like, I'm just like, as I said, prior, I'm like, there's just a lot of kindness and goodness, like I look at even times when things didn't work out well, and it was like you like, and I'm like, I know the root of where thing came from with me, they came from a good place. And so there is a possibility that at some point in time in the future, like we don't know. But like I could I could lose my career I could. It's possible. I think it's not likely, but it's but it's possible, we all could look at how many business owners are running good businesses and COVID had some just their business doesn't work well with the way the new world works. It has nothing to do with them, they have no control over it. And so by looking at that, at the end of the day, I'm still gonna play and be be vibrant. And then just deal with what comes up as it comes up. And so, you know, the goal and the hope is, is that I get to impact many people by not hiding under a rock. And it's been very fulfilling, as I've emerged from my turtle shell a couple years ago, and started being more vibrant and has and has rolled in, and people rolled in to be soccers and blackmailers the answer it has, but instead now I'm now instead of ruling my life, and not letting do my It's more for me an opportunity to practice an extreme level of kindness and compassion. Interested in baffles me that when I look at this data, like the first thing I feel is I'm just like, I'm like, What is their story? And what are they experiencing? And can I help understand why why they feel like they need to do this and and understand compassion and empathy, even though not nice things, they're intending not nice things. And so for me, I found that the more I flower, showered with love, quicker, it goes away. So Stephen Christopher 34:32 I love that the you know, Laura and I are watching this unfold with the people that were interviewing and just more of the public conversation a little bit to where, even at a high entrepreneurial level, these are starting to be more the conversations around showing an experience emotions. Understanding that expression is actually super super important in our in our life, and showing kindness and love. I mean, these these words and these kinds Conversations didn't happen publicly at all, and barely even behind closed doors, what, even 10 years ago? I mean, definitely not 20 years ago, and I'm super excited about it, because we're watching people that are highly successful have these conversations. And it's starting to show that this actually is the path. This is the path that that we need to be exploring as, as a whole, as a global community and to being fulfilled, right, as opposed to being what you think you're supposed to be in order to have that success that we were all taught, based upon our family, our upbringing, our environment. And it's you find out that Wait a minute, I've been doing these things. And yes, they may have those external indications of success. But I'm miserable, I'm unhappy. I'm not I'm not being who I am. And it doesn't feel good. Yeah, I think these words, as you've said, are part of beginning that discussion of Wait a minute, you Don't you can be successful, and still have those emotions and those feelings and show up as yourself and all those things. Unknown Speaker 36:06 Yeah. And I think that, yeah, if you don't mind cutting in, I think that when we look at one thing I think is really important to understand is, is the aspect of let's say, being a business person and not feeling emotions have a vibrant way. For the for the longest time in human history. 10,000 years 100,000 years, that was reality because reality if we look at even the United States 100 years ago, your neighbors starve. Like 100 years ago, we're talking about three generation and so if we look at all of the ideas like our grandparents didn't have the luxury to feel emotions because if you think about this, what we're gonna see some we've already been seeing we're gonna see so much more Renaissance when it comes to how we live our life because what it means to be human today is so different than every other time in history, art because If you think about this 100 years ago, you needed to get married, and you needed to have a lot of kids in order to survive. Now we are literally in the last, I don't know, 5060 years is the first time in human history that we don't need to struggle to survive. And everything in our DNA is about survival. And so we look at what does it mean to be to thrive in really, like what and so so I was like this. And one thing is to have compassion and understanding that like when we look at the ideals, and we look at this, this old way of viewing things, it's served a role for so long to get us to where we are today. So instead of looking at this and saying it was wrong, we look at this and say, Hmm, it served her all that role is now done. And so now we can look at and say, What is what does it mean to be a human and if we want to be a human, the same human we were 10,000 years ago, you can do that. But we are afforded the opportunity and I look at us, when we look at how our parents raised us and I was like view like, what is the definition of a good parent? Is did they do one iota better than their parents? Not not were they not Maybe Maybe my other friends have had parents that loved unconditionally and provide a safe environment, all that type of stuff. But if you're looking at your parents and you want to, because really, there's compassion and empathy goes a long way. And I can tell you, it is more for you than it is for other people. If you can ask yourself, did my parents do one iota better than their parents did? And if the answer is yes, I view that as success. That's moving the ball in the right direction. But again, we have to have stuff to do on our story to be like letting what our parents chose to do define who we are inside. So what I look at like this is giving myself permission again, to try something new. To have more emotions is I'm like what it means to be human is fundamentally different than what has been for any other generation prior. We are we are we are entering a new time when basic survival is not needed. Like every once in a while, I like going off into the wilderness and doing like I just got off last week from the Boundary Waters, which is in northern Minnesota, and you can do an entire new out you can't there's no motorboats. There's no nothing. You have to bring everything You're back with our group, it was all a bunch of people that we haven't gone off grid in a while. And you spend about 50 to 70% of your day, just surviving, just making your food setting up camp moving around. So your capacity and when you're done, you just want to take a nap. So you lay in a hammock and take a nap. And in for all of history, that was life, life was 70%, if not more, just getting by. So we're very fortunate now that like, our day in and day out existence, truly, we the same amount of stuff takes five to 10% of our day. And then we've got 90% of our day to choose what we want to spend our time doing. Mostly get sucked up into things we feel like we have to do, which is fine, because that's where people are at. But yeah, it is. We have the opportunity to create a new way of living. And I feel like many of us are doing it. I love that. Yeah, Stephen Christopher 39:49 I mean, it's kind of like the the saying about what work will expand to fill the amount of time that we give it well Now that we have a lot more free time because we're not having to survive. A lot of us Are unconsciously allowing work to expand to fill all a huge majority, if not almost all of that time. And then, I mean, you know, we could get really deep into how like how at least I believe that when we start to get into that pattern that actually causes our body to biochemically change and really certain chemicals and then we get addicted to those and then we keep going down the same path and then that's why we get stuck in these patterns about you know, feeling the need to work and when we get anxious and then when you actually do go on vacation, you can't actually relax at all because your body is actually just triggering those same chemical reactions just as ever driving to work in rush hour traffic at 8am. Yep, Unknown Speaker 40:42 yes, but you have to Unknown Speaker 40:46 go for it before you go. Alright, um, when you when you look at this though, we are so productive. Like if we look at how productive we are now and how fast innovation comes and how fast things are changing. It is exponential. So humans, we are at Having amazing things that would not be possible five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago. I mean, it's it is so so we only doesn't say, awesome, like, great, we're being super productive. But you have to ask yourself is that what we want your human experience to be, you know, is the role that I produce so much? I mean, I produced 50 times when my grandparents did and then I died. Is that what you want your the experience to be? And I think that there's a lot of people who are waking up but eventually saying, enough is enough. And that's something that for me, I continue to work on, you know, I i've greatly reduced the amount of hours I'm willing to be scheduled on my calendar. So that's the more in a state of flow. And I'm sure maybe you've had guests talk about flow in the past, but just being in a state of flow, staying in a state of flow. And, and I've been actively working at that for five years, and I still wake up at times struggling with the fact that I'm like, I could make more money. I could be more productive and I'm five years into practicing as I feel very well resource so it is, it's. So I feel like as a society, we're definitely in the like, let's continue to be super duper productive. But now now it's in for me how I've reframed is I look back on this last year and usually around January I was look back, I'm like, how's the net worth doing? Right? So, so how, how is my net worth on the planet grown and hit me this last year because I looked at this and I made some conscious decisions and made some pretty hefty donation. So that way my net worth was smaller this year than it was last year. But I looked at this night, I just took a breath and I leaned down and I was like, I literally feel like this was the richest year 2019 was the richest year ever for me, because I realized that there's 1000 different types of bank accounts that exist on this planet, only one has money in it. And so we look at the energetic deposits that I got to make by all of the people I got to impact. For me, I was not like this was the richest year I've ever had. It's just that the value system I am choosing to hold his signal significantly beyond monetary it is it is significantly beyond monetary. And that's been much more fulfilling and much easier for me to wrap my arms around because I'm looking at how did I do as a whole versus this one metric that society seems to hold very near and dear. Stephen Christopher 43:17 That's awesome. I love that thousands of different types of accounts and only one has money in them. Unknown Speaker 43:23 Can we quote you on that? Unknown Speaker 43:25 Absolutely. That's absolutely, Unknown Speaker 43:27 for sure. So, Stephen Christopher 43:32 Laura, I'll let you look over and see if you have any questions that you want to ask. And then, Carl, as we kind of like start to wrap this up, is there is there anything else that you can think of that is just great advice or great life experiences that you've had that you want to share with others? I know you care so deeply about helping other people have a much better experience. So is there anything that we haven't talked about yet, and then also, just if people are interested In connecting with you in some way, shape or form, or maybe even learning about the financial services side, tell them how they can best get in touch with you. First Unknown Speaker 44:12 I guess I can start with the easier part which is how do people get in touch with me? Yeah, if you if you listen to this and you just feel drawn or feel so called, you know, you can feel free to reach out, you can reach out to my work email or personal email, which I don't know if that can be like listed somewhere or something like that. I'm sure I can say it if need be. And in for me, it's like I can tell you the things I'm into like so from client side of things. I work with business owners, mostly tech business owners and helping them with with their financial planning and helping be a liaison between their CPA and attorneys. Beyond that community and tribe is what matters but like when I look at what trips my trigger is having good community and good tribe, and that is people that choose the family are born into the family you choose. And for me, I have a very strong pull towards building good tribe and building community. Because I feel like that is a lost art that if you want to read a good book read tribe by Sebastian, younger, great book that just talks about how important it is for us to all have a sense of tribe and a sense of community. And that's something that's been lost. We live in the United States, one of the only subcultures that has a good sense of tribe and community is actually a Hispanic culture. And so we look at how important it is. And for me, that's something I've been diving into. So long story short, if people reach out, those are the things that matter to me is helping people with financial planning and then good tribe. As far as it goes with advice, I would just reiterate, safety matters. And so whenever we look to make any change, just because most of us we aren't, I would love to say most of us are born into a safe environment, but we're not we don't even realize it. If we if we look at this. Most people operate on a state of fight and flight It's so common we don't it's normal. Harvard did a study in a while ago, 15 years ago now. And what they said is that 80% of business decisions are made in the state of fight and flight. That means 80% of all the decisions that are being made every single day are the state of fight and flight. And it's so pervasive, we don't even know. And so it's interesting because you can do, there's lots of things you can do out there. An exercise that really helps for me is what's called TRT. It's called trauma release exercise by David versus Sally, which is literally something that anybody can do, you can Google it. Literally, it sounds a little hippie dippie. But Navy SEALs do it to release trauma and reduce PTSD and literally, you're just making your body shake. It's a natural is really good, but almost in a car accident, and you survive it. You can shake because literally, there's so much energy built up in your body. It's your body's way of naturally releasing it. So instead of waiting until it gets so much that you can't not shake. What we do is we induce it ourselves. You can induce yourself. You can watch YouTube videos, there's classes and a lot of places as a tool to just be able to help shape its appearance like the tailor Sonic, shake it off, like you know, just shake it off, get that energy release. And I would just implore people to seek out and if you feel like you have a safe environment like that seek out to make it even safer to because because the safer we feel the more we're going to get more it becomes easier to figure out what growth is going to work for us. And every person is different. So I would say find find safety seek it out and if you feel like you have it, increase the safety and safety means safety in your environment, like like, like it doesn't mean safe because if you don't do anything, it means safety and the people you choose to be around safety in the employees you choose to keep because then it allows you to shine more vibrantly without having to worry about it. Stephen Christopher 47:48 Absolutely love that. That is awesome. My friends. Laura, any other questions before we think I'm good? Okay. She's for those Have you listening? She's got like 10 pages of notes. So I have a feeling me connect the dots episode of this will be really good. All right, well, Carl, thank you so much for the time and I really, really greatly appreciate it. Dude, I love you, brother and that you've, you've had a huge impact on on our life and I, I'm forever grateful for that. And I look forward to all of the cool, fun, exciting adventures that we're going to do moving forward in life and all of the other people that you're going to impact you truly are making a very, very large impact on the world. Unknown Speaker 48:31 My pleasure, man, thank you so much for having me. It's great talking to you guys. Stephen Christopher 48:36 All right, Laura, you want to do? Do a little recap? Sure. I feel like you say we have an amazing guest every time and I say there are so much that I got from this. It's hard to whittle it down. Um, I think I'm going to start off by the one repetitive thing that Carl kept coming back to is what The story of me, what do you want your story to be? Whether that's you, or that's your business, or that's your relationship? Right? What do you want that story to be? And for me that resonated it just in how simple it was. And I love a good story. I love to tell stories. I love people to tell me stories. And so for me, there's a magic that comes with that of your story can be anything you want, it can be as crazy or as traditional as you want it but it's your story. So that was really powerful to me is what do you want your story to be? And then with that, the aspect of having safety and I loved what, how Carl described the safe environment, to be able to grow, to be able to tackle some hard things in your life. And I think that that's so true is where do you have safety most of us don't have safe places. And even within our own family, certainly within our own companies, because there's pressure there, there's expectations, there's all those things. So where do you get to try? Where do you get to? like a little kid like a baby? Where do you get to learn to walk to touch the flame in a place that safe and so I love that idea of finding that safe place, whether it's the car or whatever it might be. So I think that that's something that'll stick with me. Unknown Speaker 50:29 And let's see what else Stephen Christopher 50:34 I guess. And then that translated into not only creating the safe place for yourself, but the safe place for others in your life, and giving them that sense of safety it whether that's as a business owner, or maybe it's in your family structure, of how do you create that safe place for your children, as opposed to maybe what our parents thought they were doing and creating a safe place for us. Unknown Speaker 51:02 And that you might lose the battle but you'll win the war. I got all kinds of books from you. What was the last one that I said? Can we use that? hundred different bank accounts but only one of them has money in it? Stephen Christopher 51:15 I think that was super important. Unknown Speaker 51:18 Yeah. Awesome. Thank you Carl so much. It was a pleasure. Unknown Speaker 51:22 My pleasure. Stephen Christopher 51:23 Alright guys, well thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the exciting unknown podcast with our amazing guest as always, Carl dettman. And make sure to stay tuned, Laura and I will be recording the connected
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