The Bosshole® Chronicles
The Bosshole® Chronicles
TBC Flashback - Mark Ostach (Jan 2023)
Mark Ostach takes us on a fascinating journey through the psychology of technology and reveals how our digital behaviors profoundly shape our emotions, relationships, and workplace cultures. Drawing from his unique background in psychology and over a decade in the tech industry, Mark shares the pivotal moments that led him from bootstrapping a technology company to becoming a sought-after keynote speaker on digital wellness.
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A very warm welcome to all of our friends out there in The Bossh ole Transformation Nation. This is your host, John Broer, and welcome to another installment of The Bossh ole Chronicles Flashback. And let me tell you what the inspiration behind this was. It's Monday morning, August 25th, and I was actually looking on LinkedIn and I saw our good friend, Mark Ostach, is speaking at the State SHRM Conference in Arizona, and I'll tell you what folks in Arizona at the conference you're going to love it.
John Broer:Mark is amazing and he's been on the program twice, but I wanted to flash back to the first time he ever joined us on the Bossh ole Chronicles and this would be going all the way back to January of 2023, and it was entitled. If you Really Knew Me, Mark is an amazing presenter, author, consultant, just a good person, and I think you're going to love hearing from him again. So let's jump in. The Bossh ole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode.
Sara Best:This guy's kind of become one of my favorite people to follow. When his e-blaster email comes into my inbox, as it does on occasion, with new ideas and new information, I stop what I'm doing and I read it, because I know there's going to be a lesson or an activity or an action that will calm me, settle me, help me get focused on what I believe is important. Before we get into all the stuff about him, let me just introduce you to Mark Ostach. Mark, welcome to the podcast.
Mark Ostach:Sarah, thanks so much for having me. It's awesome to be here and I'm excited to keep people in the John, what did you say?
John Broer:Out of The Boss hole Zone.
Mark Ostach:Out of The Boss hole Zone. I'll try my best. I'll try my best.
Sara Best:Well, Mark, I want to share with our audience. I had the privilege of listening to you provide a keynote, and you are one of the smoothest, most charismatic, easy-to-listen-to keynotes I've ever heard. This was a couple years back at a leadership summit, and this is really one of your main platforms is to provide keynote speeches. You've done TED Talks. You've written two books. We'll talk about both of them today. One just released most recently it's one that I've been sharing with my clients, but we'll get into that. You're a frequently featured speaker on USA Today, and the topic, the subject matter that you talk about is very specialized. I would like to toss it to you, Mark, to tell us a little bit about how you arrived as an expert in digital detox, among other things, and just tell us a little bit about your journey and what you shared today.
Mark Ostach:Yeah, Sara, I appreciate you teeing that up. So the space that I'm in and I always my ears get red when I hear the word expert, because I feel like we all are lifelong learners but in the space of having a lot of experience in digital wellness and mental health, the two spaces that I spend most of my day and life into I found myself as a recent college graduate with a degree in psychology, and I was lost, like many other 22-year-olds are when they graduate, and I did what you do when you're lost you go back to school. And I went back to school for massage therapy school because I was really interested in workplace wellness as it pertains to ergonomics and kind of chair massage and those sorts of things, and had a vision for a business that I was going to launch in the corporate arena providing chair massages and that bit that I, that vision, kind of uh collapsed when a good friend of mine started a technology company who I was living with after college, so he hired me. Actually, I worked for him for free for about eight months until we could go from two people to three people on payroll, which was fun, and then from there, for the next 10 years I spent in the technology arena really becoming aware of the psychology of technology. So it was just truly by both passion and experience that those worlds collided. And while I was on the HR side so I was in charge of hire I was the non-engineer right. Everyone else had these technical degrees. I was a liberal arts guy interested in poetry and counseling, which fit me great. When we were hiring, we hired 40 people within five years and it was an awesome experience.
Mark Ostach:But in that experience I continued just to really realize how what you do and view online shapes your thoughts, your moods, your mindset and just your relationships, and that kind of focus became a bit of an obsession. Just your relationships and that kind of focus became a bit of an obsession. And I found myself bootstrapping a technology company that allowed you to better manage your time on the internet. This was 12 years ago and our mission was to say if we can show users and people how their mood is impacted by the sites they go to, then they'll be more aware of the sites that make them sad, mad, frustrated, et cetera. Yes, so that was an awesome, awesome experience and that was literally 12 years ago before any of the social media giants tracked mood, kind of publicly. That's where my central focus was.
Mark Ostach:So just fast forward five years after that technology company launched. It was one of those freemium kind of things you know you don't have to pay to play. And I met my wife. We were engaged. She said this company you're spending a ton of time and money into is not generating any revenue. You should advocate for the things that you're passionate about, not just you know, share technology solutions, and that kind of was a pivot in my journey on deciding to go into speaking and writing as opposed to building technology products. And fast forward to today, two books later, two kids later, two dogs later. It's been quite a journey, but it's been an awesome one.
Sara Best:I'm just going to breathe that in for a minute. Such an angle, such a niche angle that has incredible impact and maybe unconscious to many, many people. Tell us about the ways that you found success in I don't want to say transforming or reforming people, but how have you been able to help people see and connect to the challenge and the mood disorder and the things that can happen from our interface with technology?
Mark Ostach:Yeah, great, great question, sarah. I've got a 92-year-old mentor who always tells me that simple things unite and complex things divide. Very simple, right. So I feel like what I've been able to do is just share some simple things that we need to be mindful of, and an example of that is looking at our digital calories the same way we look at our physical calories. So we're all hyper aware of you know you get things like biohacking and you know people are like measuring out the amount of grams or macros they eat or consume. But what does that look like as it pertains to your digital life? So that simple metaphor has been used for a decade for me, just kind of inviting people into the dialogue. So that's a, for instance.
Mark Ostach:I think another thing that I've realized is that stories connect. So Sarah mentioned the newsletter. I send a story out a month and it's been really cool to be able to, you know, just share stories about not so much traditional digital detox information and things like that. I'm actually more interested in making sure the endangered human connection element doesn't get lost in the transactional nature of our days, which I think going back to like uh, getting you know, becoming a boss hole, which we're we're trying to avoid. It's really a it's really a by-product of, of burnout and and a lack of feeling connected to the things that bring you joy and peace in your life. And you can do nothing. But you know, you know, swim like a duck underneath all your emails and meetings and your to-dos and that pressure builds up and next thing, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're quacking at somebody or biting them Right.
Mark Ostach:So a lot of it's just help helping to raise awareness on how, how your internet behaviors and how your digital calories just impact your day Mark may I ask you make me think of you make as a night?
John Broer:Okay, so you have a 92-year-old mentor. That's remarkable and what a blessing to have somebody like that in your life. And also that's somebody who was around and working well, well, well before the advent of the technology we know today. Okay, I mean, there have been technological advances ever since you know that person was working, technological advances ever since that person was working. But I've got to imagine, relative to managers and supervisors, that on the one hand, the technology presents itself as a great convenience, but it also can make us a bit lazy around not investing that time in one another. In other words, it's very easy to just shoot out a text, an email, a Slack response of some sort, when really it is better served by picking up the phone. And I mean, is that really where you're seeing some of this as well?
Mark Ostach:Yeah, and just kind of commenting on my mentor who's 92, started off his career as a physician where he was making $5.
Mark Ostach:patient visits like, house calls like with the black bag, you know, going to a patient's house for five bucks, so literally not even fax machines didn't even exist. But kind of laddering that back to to to your, your question, john, I think there's almost been um, and I feel it sometimes too like there's been a fear. Just to pick up the phone and call somebody. You feel like you're going to disrupt them, your own focus on well, that's going to take 20 minutes as opposed to the two minutes that I could just dump another to-do in their inbox as opposed to truly calling them. So there's been recent research that shows like communication preferences across demographics and psychographics, and one of the interesting things that came out of that communication research for me that I took away was how much people prefer texting across like millennials, gen Zs, boomers, you know, boomers. That seems a little counterproductive to me, but in the same breath I think one of the reasons why is because there's not enough time in the day to make those phone calls, or at least that's the story that we're subscribing to.
Mark Ostach:I would push back and say it's the opposite. You can get a heck of a lot more done with a phone call. You just might need to be bold and call people before 8am, when they're actually available. So when you and when you call them before 8am, don't just go right to the jugular of what it is you want. Check in, acknowledge the beauty of the sunrise that you're looking at in your commute or out your office window. Try to find a common ground that's rooted in some of the beauty of which is the new day in front of you, and then get into what it is that you're looking to get or take away from that communication point.
Sara Best:That's a good reminder to not be all business but to foster that connection and savor the things that we're grateful for as we engage, Because the relationships we have with clients and colleagues and vendor partners and others.
Sara Best:they're really blessings If you look at them that way, they truly are time to highlight too. You have a resource that I've started sharing with all my clients, which is a gratitude journal. It's a tiny little book of wonder that you created. It's a 14-day journey and not to shift gears radically away from what we were talking about. But let's pause for a moment and bring in this idea of gratitude Tell us about the inspiration for this little journal.
Mark Ostach:Yes.
Mark Ostach:So, like many other struggling writers, I had a desire to write a book and I had a couple of manuscripts that were starting and stopping.
Mark Ostach:So then you know, god had kind of given me a vision for this little incremental step towards authorship, which is this little gratitude notebook, sarah, that you're referencing and I know those that are listening can't quite see it, but picture your iPhone, because it's about the size of an iPhone.
Mark Ostach:That was by design and the idea was can you pick up kind of a habit of gratitude before you pick up your phone? So the hope is that it's a two week little challenge. There's a quote on one side and then there's a page for you to write what you're worried about and then what you're grateful for. And the idea is is that if you can do that for two weeks you might shift some of that doom scrolling that happens first thing out of bad before you've even peed or brush your teeth and gotten into a little bit more of a of a heart of thanks and praise, which Sarah and I know and, john, I don't know you as well as I know Sarah, but like it is a we need to be like, almost like diligent warriors, and how we are cultivating gratitude with all of the heaviness of the world.
John Broer:Amen, that is so true.
Sara Best:Yes, yeah, and people can. They can purchase this for themselves, for their teams. We'll put a link in our show notes so that people can go right to your website.
John Broer:They're deeply inexpensive for the value they provide.
Mark Ostach:So I encourage.
Sara Best:And it's funny because, how you described, you know how this little notebook came to be as a great segue into the two things that I wanted to make sure we talked about. One is in 2020, you wrote a book that was designed to help people build courage and connection online yes, To really become comfortable and confident and powerful in their connection with people. And how timely was that? Because we were in the midst of a lockdown. Tell us a little bit about that book and then we'll jump forward and talk about your latest book, which again centers on connection and culture of connection and belonging. There's an incredible theme here, so tell us about.
Mark Ostach:Yeah, thank you sir.
Mark Ostach:You know, it is all God's timing, and what you don't read between the pages that are on the back of the book of Courage to Connect, which came out in July of 2020, was a very scared child, and that scared child was me, and the background behind that was I had been building the speaking business on the side through a side hustle, using my vacation days and kind of maneuvering my schedule to a point where it reached a threshold where I had to maintain my integrity at my current employer and say, hey, listen, this is what I want to do full time. Can we talk about a succession plan over the next six months? They said absolutely, You've outgrown this role. We see your future, Keep going. Well, that was a great kind of you know come to Jesus moment for me and confessing what it was I wanted to do. Uh. However, that six month uh runway turned into two weeks when we lost our biggest client the next week.
John Broer:Oh boy, oh wow.
Mark Ostach:So I found myself in November of 2019 with this kind of kick in the pants to get out into this sole practitioner space to provide an income for my family. And in that same week, my father-in-law had passed and my wife said listen, we've got about 45 days of money in the bank, so if you're going to do this, you have to do this. Yesterday. And she said I believe in you, but go. So I went and I went hard and I got some bookings and all these sorts of things and then, as we all know the story goes, the pandemic hits, all the events cancel and I found myself like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do with my life?
Mark Ostach:And in that space I got quiet and I fought off a lot of the anxieties and I was like, well, I need to finish this dang book and I have the time. So I finished the book with help of a friend and got the book out. While I was finishing the book this of a friend and got the book out. While I was finishing the book, this thing called zoom, you know, became mainstream and then, from that point forward to today, I've done nearly 200 zoom events and, uh, it's been a season of harvest. So yeah, that's a little bit of behind the scenes of uh, of how some of those things get birthed.
John Broer:And I don't want to step over a theme that I'm picking up on, and that is the wisdom of your wife.
Mark Ostach:You know what this is. This is a. This is a really good theme and I'll use this as an actual and honest transition to share a story from a book, from the new book. If you really knew me, sarah, I know you mentioned maybe sharing a story and this is a good timing. But yeah, I have.
Mark Ostach:Uh, you know, truthfully, there's been a season of resistance and my wife has had clarity in a vision that she's been given and I I've kind of been like those 1980 TVs where you kind of got to fix the bunny ears to see if my vision is her vision and our covenant is on the right path. And uh, there's a story in the book called honey in the rock. In it is on the right path. And there's a story in the book called Honey in the Rock. We hear the terms rock, bottom rock in a hard place, but we don't really hear the terms honey in a rock. So I'm going to try to make this a two and a half minute story, but it speaks to the work that I'm doing through what's called the Bell Method, and the Bell Method stands for belonging, empathy, listening and love. So I went from courage to connect, teaching people courage and how to connect online and offline, to taking all these 200 events and observations through all these organizations to say, okay, well, how do people maintain connection in a hybrid world? And I just kind of got this vision for the bell method teaching, belonging, empathy, listening and love. So in the new book each story has a reflection kind of corner that says, after this story which element of the Bell method stands out to you. So that's how it works. So back to Honey in the Rock.
Mark Ostach:We're going to renovate our house, redo a kitchen. I'm all excited. Living in a little three bedroom ranch Life is good, neighbors are great. And we find ourselves at Lowe's on a typical date night and we're about to sign for new appliances and new cabinets and we end up pausing and realizing that we just want to have a good friend who does design work to come over and double check our plans. That night we go home my wife. We're emailing late at night. She says, hey, look at this house for Sal and Zillow. I'm thinking, what are you talking about? This is our forever home. And lo and behold, she finds us. I say, well gosh, that house sure does have everything we need. It's closer to the kids' school, let's check it out and that began a period of do we love it or list it.
Mark Ostach:Well, 10 houses later I am like in the agony of like you know what, let's not move, let's go back to the kitchen remodel. And she is like praying steadily, fasting for like clarity, and is this house for you know, should we move? So I say to her listen, let's be done, let's pause, market's getting all funky. She said, okay, but one more house. So we look at this. One more house. It's on a dirt road, on a lake, two things we never even fathomed. And we found ourselves really with the peace of God. In this house, kids were actually for the first time, feeling the presence of like okay, this could be my room. We have an eight and five-year-old, so looking at houses with little kids is one of the most challenging things that you'll ever do. So, long story short, we find ourselves putting an offer on this house. We put an offer on it highest and best. The next day we find out that we are the runners up. So we're feeling kind of the ups and downs of the house, hunting my wife, who is very, you know, a rule follower. She decides to write a letter to the homeowners. Writes a letter to the homeowners, drops it off. The next day gets a text from the homeowners saying your letter moved us to tears. We felt the spirit of God in your words, praying that you find the right house. If it's not this one, you know, hopefully one day our paths will cross. If not, see you in heaven and it was this bold, like you know, hopefully one day our paths will cross. If not see you in heaven and it was this bold, like you know. Communication back. So that gave my wife hope. That gave me a little bit of like hmm, that maybe this is a bit of a sacred experience we're about to embark on.
Mark Ostach:Two months go by. The house sells. My wife is like so focused on praying circles around this house she's literally dropping the kids off and walking laps in the neighborhood as if we already live there. I'm like eating sugary M&Ms with the kids watching Sonic 2 at the theaters and she's like no sugar. I need to have clarity, right. So the house sells and we're driving in the car on this one day and we're like kind of. You know, it's three days after the house sells and we have this running joke for the last two months. Hey, did Amy call you? Amy's the homeowner this, but the people that bought our house came to move in. They purchased it over Zoom right 2022. They never walked the house. They came to move in with their cars and the keys they legally own it and they said this house isn't the right house for us. We're going to put it back on the market. So Amy says I remember the card you wrote us you should get in touch with their realtors. They didn't put it back on the market, they sold it to us.
Mark Ostach:A whole series of things happened, kind of that. I'll spare the details. You can read the story in the book. But it was this kind of divine calling of like this sacred house that is for us didn't kind of come out the way that I had envisioned it in my mind. I'm sitting in the home now we're four months in. But you know, you know the bell method, my mind. I'm sitting in the home now, we're four months in, but the Bell method.
Mark Ostach:My wife and I had different elements. Right, she was listening, she was totally listening, she was feeling that God's whisper, she was acting on that and I wasn't right. So here we are in the home four months later and still a whole bunch of growth. I think that when you find yourself in situations of change and new experiences. Sometimes the growth can be like it can almost be so intimidating or debilitating that you get lost in, in, in the, in the wilderness. So, yeah, yeah, anyways, that's. That's a snippet from the book. Uh, I thought that that was a story that came to mind today Sarah and John.
John Broer:I love that story and that is one of those stories too, mark, where and it's not lost on you or your wife where you have to pause and reflect on his hand, not where we expect it or in our timing, but that's a hard thing to do in today's world. I mean, the world itself wants to push us through and rush us through so many things technology to distract us. But having that conviction and the capacity to just just be patient and listen to that still small, still small voice, that's just. That's just a great story. What a blessing. That's awesome.
Sara Best:Thanks, sean of the continued uncertainty that we face financially globally. We were all suffering to some degree by all this, and some much more than others, but we would be remiss if we didn't just acknowledge hey, managers have a heavy load.
Mark Ostach:Yes.
Sara Best:Managing up, managing down.
John Broer:Sarah, can I dovetail on that? Yeah, I mean that's the whole point of this podcast. Yes, Sarah, can I dovetail on that as long? I mean that's the whole point of this podcast is we just want to encourage managers and supervisors don't be part, don't be the origin of the misery and the suffering. And you may not realize that you will see Mark's resources, including the Gratitude Journal, but I'll also cross-reference that episode that we did a few weeks back about gratitude in the workplace. That's transformational work and, to your point, Sarah, in addition to developing people, that's hard.
Sara Best:Well, and there are a couple of things that come to mind. Mark, you know you are an expert in emotional intelligence. You may not use that language or that speak, but what you promote and what you teach and what you share and how you live, too, are things that help people develop a mindfulness, a centeredness, a connection, not only a social connection, but an internal and maybe, in many cases, a spiritual connection. And it's about meeting basic human need, and I love that you, in the very beginning of our conversation today, talked about simple. Simple is the solution, Simple is the way. So how about for managers and supervisors and leaders and others that have influence over people to just remember belonging? Empathy, listening and love are pretty much all you have to focus on.
Sara Best:Well, not all, but mostly what you have to focus on when it comes to getting the best out of your team and creating the best for your team, but it also means that you have to find that yourself.
Mark Ostach:Yes, and I'll share kind of two references. One, an additional thing that managers and leaders can do that will remove some of the burden of like wondering how are my people, you know who's kind of quietly withdrawing in this quiet quitting kind of movement and who is disengaged, and these sorts of things. And as you maintain, as you kind of get yourself as a leader locked into that, that atmosphere becomes very fear stricken. So there are two questions that you can ask your people that you manage weekly. That will save you a whole bunch of mental space and they're super simple. The first one is you ready for this?
Sara Best:Yeah.
Mark Ostach:What are you working on? And the second one is how can I help? Wow, what are you working on and how can I help? That can be the agenda of your 15 minute or 30 minute one-on-one and on the on the rare instances when they go into detail on how you can help them, you now have meaning in your managerial or leadership responsibilities. You don't have to manufacture new programs or systems or processes for them to do their jobs better. Just ask them what they're working on and how can you help and most times they won't need your help, which will create a little bit more space in that one-on-one to get into that relational side of the relationship that needs to be fostered and nurtured. That is going to make that employee or that person that much more safe and comfortable and transparent with you when the rubber hits the road on things like growth or exit.
Sara Best:I hear the ping. The ping happens when something is spoken or shared and it's like yeah, that. And for managers and leaders who have hesitation or concern or think I don't have time for that, we need results. This is the avenue and the medium and the access to those results. Would you agree?
Mark Ostach:Yeah, yes, I do, and I think, as leaders, when you're feeling overwhelmed or disconnected, the simplicity almost seems too good to be true. Yeah, workplace, and I'm noticing this and it's totally the level of discomfort for me, and I'm even just consulting with organizations I'm not internal to any one organization, but like when you remove some of the bloat of the day of the workday, with extra meetings and long lunches and coffees all of which I love, by the way I thoroughly enjoy.
Mark Ostach:But when you remove those things, you're starting to find more time in your day to let your mind wonder on your significance and your role and your responsibilities that have shifted because you now have more space. Either you have more space or you're even doubled up on the video meetings and your days are even busier. It's one or the other, that's right. So the the the the part is, what I'm driving at is that, like you need to kind of reinvent your rhythms in this new, new way of working, and part of that requires exercise and movement and things that are going to bring you more, more of that like energy that you can give to others that you maybe didn't have the privilege of with your 45-minute commute or your client luncheons that always had to be in person at the one restaurant that took two hours to get your food right, that's right.
Mark Ostach:So I don't know if you guys can comment on that or how that relates to you both specifically.
Sara Best:Well, I think what you're talking about, mark, is creating margin, and I know that's one of the at the end of your book you actually have prayers that you know you provide on behalf of the readers, over the readers, if you will, and one is for greater margin, margin to have to do more of the things you love and the things that fill you up. So I think that's an inside-out job too. Most of what we're talking about here starts with awareness and connection to what's driving us from the inside. John, what are your thoughts?
John Broer:Well, your question, mark, made me think of a number of conversations I've had I think we've had over the last couple of years. Of conversations I've had, I think we've had over the last couple of years, where some organizations are saying, well, you know what, we're going to have people coming back to the workplace and some are saying we're going to mandate that. And when people start to evaluate and really look at the cost of commutes, giving up or sacrificing time with family, I think they realized that that actually took away. I mean this was not life affirming it was not. I mean I think they physically feel that it was taking something away. It's like taking something from my soul and my physical health, my mental health.
John Broer:I think that's why we're getting a lot of people saying I just don't want that anymore. There is something more, and more doesn't mean filling it with more technology. It doesn't mean jamming more stuff into that 45 minutes or an hour that you have in the morning. I mean let's not step over the fact that, mark, you have a deep and strong faith, as do Sarah and myself, and when I think there are people out there thinking there's gotta be more, there's something else to. You know, we talk about helping people find meaning and fulfillment in their work. I think there's a hunger, and that hunger is related to something. So when people say I think there's something more out there, the answer is yes, there absolutely is.
Mark Ostach:Right, yeah, I will give a healthy confession. Like I am in a season of margin and I'm having to learn how to have it. Like there's a lot of anxieties and like habits and routines that are like whoa like, do I need to do this? And part of it's because we moved out into the sticks a little bit. Whoa like, do I need to do this? And part of it's because we moved out into the sticks a little bit, so I have a little bit more time on my hands. But then that goes back to like all right, well, you know, 20 years into my career, you know I've had this mentor for 15 years who's been just a brilliant person in my life. It's like how am I starting to give more of my time? Right? And I think a lot of people that find themselves whether you're in the middle of your career, whether you're sunsetting or taking an early retirement or downshifting like you have time on your hands and without intentionality behind that time, it can drive you nuts. That's right.
Sara Best:It's the other end of the spectrum which is equally stressful and challenging. But you know, just even thinking about your book, the reflections and the opportunity to digest the content personally after each story, I think would be a great exercise for anybody who's finding themselves. You know we often refer to it as liminal space, which was another podcast episode we did a while back with Rick and Amy Simmons podcast episode we did a while back with Rick and Amy Simmons. I first heard about liminal space from Father Richard Rohr, who is just an amazing contemplative kind of priest. But it's this idea of you know we're in between, like what we knew before doesn't exist anymore and what is coming to be is not fully known.
Sara Best:But, how can we settle in, you know, find margin, capitalize on the margin and and explore the opportunity that this in-between space provides for us, and it does. It does provide incredible opportunity. But I think the message that you're sharing today, Mark, is, you know, like it starts with connection. It starts with connection to you and connection to others, and really all the other stuff gets figured out. It does get figured out.
John Broer:Well, Mark, what's next on the horizon for you? What is right around the corner that you're excited about?
Mark Ostach:You know, I had a chance to do a keynote last month with a kind of a co-creator. He's a piano player and I've been. You know, I'm a storyteller and I kind of have been getting sick of my own PowerPoints, right, you know the typical way. So I synced up with him and we basically have come up with a new kind of style of presenting. It's more on entertainment and we go through the Bell Method and we teach managers and leaders what the Bell Method sounds like with music, what the method could be like with stories. So it's just kind of this little like back and forth. It's a little cooler than who was it? Dave Letterman and Paul, kind of the back and forth Paul Schaefer, that'sman and Paul, kind of the you know the back and forth.
John Broer:Paul Schaefer, that's right, paul Schaefer.
Mark Ostach:But like, for instance, you know, when we look at the owl method for listening, right, you know, I say Bob, bob's a piano player named Bob, what does listening sound like, you know. And he starts playing. You know, hello from Adele, right. And then I'm like Bob, you know, all right, that's good.
Mark Ostach:But, like you know, when you show up on your, on your zoom session, and you're, it's 1201 and there's eight people on the invite and you're the only one there, you know, like, and you're wondering is, is this meeting going to happen? And the next thing, you know, you've had 15 meetings and it's you know, 430 and you have, you've missed lunch. You know what does that sound like? And then he plays, you know, comfortably Numb from Pink Floyd, right, because it's just this whole like. So. And then I say Bob, that's great, I'm glad that's what you know listening sounds like. Let me share with you what it looks like. So I'm excited now that we have one kind of public rep under our belt on that. You know, keynote experience. I want to do more of those. I want to go on tour with Bob and I and bring music and storytelling to all of the leaders and organizations looking to figure out how that we can create a culture of connection and belonging in the future of work. So that's what I'm excited about.
Sara Best:Well, I hope this platform can connect you to certainly some of our listeners and their organizations, for whom their managers, supervisors and leaders would greatly benefit from having you present and share in this unique, cool way.
Mark Ostach:Yeah, I'll share a link you guys can put in the show notes so people can see what it looks like. But, yeah, that's what I'm excited about.
John Broer:Please do. I think that'll be great. That's what I'm excited about?
Sara Best:Please do. I think that'll be great. Mark, I just on behalf of John, and I both, and all of our listeners, we're grateful for. You know the synergy that was created by both your passion, your interest and fate to bring forward the message, and really it's not just what you say and what you write about. I mean, those things are amazing and I want our listeners to tap into that, but it's really who you are too. I just want to say thank you for having the courage to be vulnerable and honest and somebody that people can absolutely listen to and relate to.
Mark Ostach:Thank you, sarah. I really appreciate that. John, I appreciate you guys having me on. I also want to give the listeners a gift the new book. If you Really Knew Me the Secret to Creating a Culture of Connection and Belonging, I'll put a. I'll send you a link for people to download an ebook version of that book.
Sara Best:Wow, thank you. Yeah, and I hope they know what a gift it is. As I mentioned, I've been sharing this with my clients. I've been enjoying this book daily, so uh, thank you, mark.
Mark Ostach:That's generous. Thank you, sarah. Thank you, John, I appreciate it.
John Broer:Well, it's been great having you here and everybody. Check out the show notes and we will see you next time. On the Boss Hole Chronicles, like I said, timeless wisdom from Kim Scott you can see why I wanted to bring this back up for a flashback. So make sure you go into the show notes and listen to part two of that particular interview with Kim Scott and look at the resources that are available, and especially her new book, radical Respect. Keep checking back to the Boss Hole Chronicles. We'll see you soon.