--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have a tremendous episode for you, a conversation with Kimmy Donahue, a senior agency success manager at Openly. But Kimmy is so much more, and if you follow on LinkedIn, then you know that.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): What I love is in her LinkedIn bio, it starts with "InsurTech, sure," but then "Revenue Rocker, making businesses sing." I think it's absolutely phenomenal, and Kimmy is one of a kind. We hadn't had a chance to talk long form yet like we did in this podcast, and it was wonderful.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): She had reached out to me after the episode that I had done a while ago about the insurance hub and neurodivergent insurance professionals and what it means for our industry. We talked a lot about that. We talked a lot about just insurance in general, business in general, life. A lot of amazing topics, incredible conversation, very open, very candid.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): These are the kind of conversations that I do, the reason I do the show. We can talk tactics and strategy all day, but quite honestly, that stuff bores the hell out of me. Insurance and selling insurance is actually really easy. If you make it hard, that's a you problem. It is the emotional, relational, leadership, management, dealing with crises, communication. It is the soft skill stuff that either makes us a success or failure, not our ability to execute tactical activities.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Conversations like this one with Kimmy are exactly the reason that I do this show, and I'm so happy to bring it to you. If you love this show, please share it. Social, text it to a friend, email it to a friend, tell somebody at an event. We continue to grow. We continue to have great conversations. We continue to bring amazing people on with incredible stories and insights, and I want to get those individuals as much exposure as we possibly can.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): If you want to help and want to push the show forward, I would love that. Share. Also, if you're enjoying the show, then you'll love the writing that I'm doing on Finding Peak. Go to FindingPeak, F-I-N-D-I-N-G-P-E-A-K.com, FindingPeak.com, as in Finding Peak Performance. The whole concept is 10x ideas to build more freedom into our lives.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): If we have freedom, we can do great work. We can grow our businesses. We can grow our relationships. We can take on side projects. We can find that Dan Sullivan idea of our unique ability. But we cannot do that without freedom. If our life is packed, if our brain is packed, if we are under stress, if we are under someone's thumb, if we're under our own thumb, which is often most likely the case, then we cannot get there.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Finding Peak is about that journey. It's a journey that I'm on personally, and I just share my own thoughts and feelings, the research I do, the things that I try in my business life and my personal life. I think you'll enjoy it. Go to Finding Peak. It's free. Sign up. Subscribe. You get one email a week from me with stories and ideas.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I just absolutely love the fact that you listen to this show. I try to put as much work into it as I can. Hopefully you feel the heart and soul that comes through in every episode and how much I care about delivering value to you. I appreciate you for listening. Thank you so much.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): All right, with that, let's get on to Kimmy Donahue. I'm going to Shaboom.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): What's up?
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Hey, how are you?
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Good. I am trying to see here. Testing, testing. Can you hear my microphone?
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, you are. Your microphone is emasculating me right now.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Oh, no! It's actually not my singing microphone. I'm like, ooh.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Sounds awesome. Cool. Yay. Well, I'm excited to have you on the show.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Likewise. This is... well, you're not on my show, I'm on your show. But I'm super excited to talk about this stuff. That's the stuff I could talk about all day.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I'd love to start with just in general for people, just a little bit of your origin story. You don't have to go too far back or spend too much time on it because I want to talk about other stuff. But I'd love just a little bit of origin story for people who may not know you or may not have heard you or seen you doing your thing or follow you on LinkedIn or all the other places that you're creating. Just to give the audience a little backstory.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Yeah, so I am Kimmy Donahue, currently agency success manager over at Openly. Prior to that, if we want to go all the way back, how I got into the insurance industry is like everybody else: I just kind of fell into it. I was super interested in what it can do for people and started as a producer at a captive company, opened my own captive agency, went independent, and actually exited from a partnership and joined Openly. So that's my insurance origin story.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): A couple other things about me: I'm just one of those that loves to take action. So I'm involved in many projects. I've got a lot of different hobbies. Music is one of them, hence this cool microphone that I'm really struggling to get to stay in the picture because of that virtual background stuff. But anyway.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): The good news is I don't produce the video, so it doesn't matter.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Oh, cool. Even better. So no one will actually see what's happening on here. Then I won't care. I'll face it more towards me so it sounds better.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): There you go. So what happened was, and I know this wouldn't be a problem from you because you're just comfortable being in front of people. But what I find is when I produce the video, people get really weird.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Oh, no.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yes. We could have these open, honest conversations that are dynamic and all over the board, which is why I do the show and what I love about it. If I tell them I'm recording the video and I'm going to put it on YouTube, I will get these square conversations where people completely change. I'm like, you know that people can hear the words on Apple Podcasts, right? But if you can see their face, they completely change.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): For that reason, I would love to do a video show, but I feel like it really has to be in person. I think when you produce the video, the audio is different for some people. It doesn't feel like you're talking to thousands of people when it's just audio. But when you know the video is being produced, people suddenly have to look right and have to sit right. It just changes everything. So I just stopped producing a video a long time ago.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Interesting. That would be a really cool case study to run with and see what kind of different conversations you have with all of that. That is very interesting.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I didn't mean to interrupt you.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): No, that's okay. That's going to happen this whole show, probably, which I'm totally okay with. But yes, this is probably why I'm okay with being on video. I'm on stage. I sing when I'm not doing insurance-related things. Prior to that, I was always in different kinds of competitive sports, whether it was motorcycle racing. I was involved in competitive shooting as well, things like three-gun. Even going all the way back to my childhood, I was captain of my high school bowling team. Not really something you always go out and say, "Hey, guess what I did," but I love bowling.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): It's just always very competitive. And going way back, because I know the reason that we wanted to chat was you had a post about neurodiversity and ADHD. So this is really where it gets interesting. Back in fourth grade, I was diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome. Not a lot of people know about that, one because I don't talk about it that much. I'll post about it here and again. People close to me know exactly what that is. But one of the reasons I never really talked about it prior was I said, you know what, I don't want to be labeled as the girl with Tourette's. It's interesting because you hear celebrities and famous people with Tourette's as well say the same thing. In today's day and age, it's so easy to get a label based on anything that makes you stand out anymore.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): If you don't mind me interrupting here, and I probably will do this like a thousand times...
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Go ahead.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I'm just interested. Tourette's. You see people with Tourette's in movies and it's overdramatized. Could you break down for people what that actually means?
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Absolutely. The official definition to be diagnosed with Tourette's is you have to have at least two motor tics, which are physical actions. So a twitch of some sort, or maybe you have to jump up and down, and one vocal tic. A vocal tic doesn't necessarily mean you have to be speaking words. I know one of the common things that you'll see in comedies and movies is people cursing. That's just a piece that could happen with it. I'm lucky I didn't get that piece, and I'll cover that in a minute.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I do have several tics, like sounds that I make with my mouth. They were a lot worse when I was younger. I wouldn't say I've grown out of it, but it's definitely gotten better. I truly think it's just because I learned how to handle my emotions better. I've noticed that when I'm extremely stressed or the opposite, excited, my face twitches get crazy and I focus more on that.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Tourette's is more prevalent in males, which is also very interesting. They're not really sure where it comes from. It could be genetic, maybe. It could just be something that is developed. There's still a lot of research going on into what it is and how it becomes a thing. It's also one of those things where just because you have a tic of some sort, or a habit as I used to like to call them, doesn't mean you have Tourette's.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): What started for me was when I was younger, I had a really bad squinting twitch and a couple other things. That was really the prevalent one when I was younger. My parents didn't know what it was. They thought it was just a habit that I was doing. So we created a reward system where if I could quit squinting for 30 minutes, I'd get ice cream or something. People know me, I love ice cream. I love food. So that was a really hard thing to not win. When they found that I could stop it for a little while but it would come back worse, they said, "Okay, something's going on."
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): It took a couple of years, but finally we went to a psychiatrist. They diagnosed me with everything under the sun. I've started writing about this because looking back on it as a kid, you don't know that doctors should be asking a lot of questions. Back then I thought, "Oh my gosh, I've got all these things wrong with me." Looking back on it, I think my parents probably could have gotten a second opinion. I think I still would have gotten diagnosed with Tourette's, absolutely. But they diagnose you with all the other things that they think come with Tourette's, like ADHD, OCD, depression, all these other things. I'm in fourth grade, man.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): The one thing that really did help with getting diagnosed was now I had a name for it and it was easier to cope and explain to people. When I was younger, I had one where I would shake my head, almost like I was trying to get my hair out of my face. Teachers and summer camp counselors thought I was telling them no, and they would get really frustrated with that. Once I was able to have a name for that diagnosis, I could explain it. Even to this day, it's still such a misunderstood thing that it does take a little bit of extra steps to tell them, "No, it's okay. I'm okay. It can be annoying, but it's just part of me."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I couldn't agree with you more. The whole point of that podcast, the couple of podcasts I did talking through with the Insurance Hub, which I think is an incredible organization that I'm really excited about as Mike continues to get that off the ground around neurodiversity in the insurance industry. I got diagnosed with ADHD. It's not debilitating. I'm severely high functioning. The main impact has been my ability to understand how to communicate with people better.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Before, I just thought I was excitable or I was considered like a troublemaker. Not that I did bad things, but that I was constantly annoying the adults when I was a kid. They called me the megaphone. As I've gotten into my work career, I've been called disagreeable, overbearing. In my mind, I'm going, "I just have 10,000 ideas and I want to share them with all of you all the time because I want to share them with you." That's what my mind is saying: share, share, share, let's go. I didn't realize that's overwhelming to some people. Some people's brains don't work that way.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): To your point, having the label, I don't like to talk about it necessarily. I have been lately because I think it's important. But as soon as you have the label, you're like, "Now I can figure out how to work with that." Before I was just like, "Am I really nuts?" My ex-wife used to see me all the time and say, "Why are you this way? You're too much. You're too much. You're too much all the time." That started me thinking, "Man, am I just really a fucking annoying person? Maybe I'm just annoying." Come to find out, it's actually true. To someone like her, I was too much. I was annoying.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Now when I meet a normie, which is what I call non-neurodivergent people, I dial it in a little bit and go, "You know what, if I give this person full throttle, they're probably going to hate me. So I'm going to give them half throttle and see how that goes." Once you have that name, you can work with it.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): For those of you since we aren't doing a video, I'll let everyone know that my eyes are tearing up because I totally resonate with all of that. I grew up with that exact same feeling with friends and even to this day with my peers. How I've combated that is setting the expectation up front: "Hey, sometimes I can be a little much." Like you, Ryan, I get super excited about my ideas and I want to share them all. To people that like to take information and process it or be communicated with in a much different way, that can be really overwhelming for them.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I love the fact that you are open to how to communicate with others. There are people that are even more than how your brain works. You'd probably be like, "Whoa, how do we work with that?" I think what's really interesting too is the word "neurodivergent" was really new to me in the last maybe 12 months or so. I was just like, "Wow, I never knew I fell into that category because I didn't even know it was a thing."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): It's cool that people are talking about it. I think just like any kind of DEI conversation, it's about how do you communicate with others in the way they want to be communicated with. The hard part is people like you and me are better than all the normies, so we actually have to dial it. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. All you normies out there who made our lives miserable for the last however many years. No, I'm just kidding.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): One of the things, and I don't know if you heard the show that I did with Michael from the Insurance Hub.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I listened to it and I love his energy too. I'm like, "Whoa, this is cool."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): We talked a lot off the air too and have had other conversations off the air because I want to be involved with his organization more. I think it's very important. One of the things that we've talked about is how, unlike maybe other things that could be different about you, neurodivergent people, and I think he would agree on this perspective to a certain extent, the onus is on us to work on ourselves to communicate in certain situations with people who may not know how to handle us. I think it is too much of an ask to have the greater population change to adapt to us.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Right now I have like seven things going on in my head at one time. I'm trying to stay very focused on you. I could easily fly off on a tangent if I allowed myself to do so, or if I were tired, or when I get excited, that happens similar to you. It is impossible for someone, and this is what I learned mostly from my ex-wife because she is a normie, it is impossible for her to follow along. There are two things happening at one time. Those of us whose brain works in a different way need to work on ourselves to be able to communicate in a productive manner as much as we can to the people who maybe cannot keep up or cannot follow the way that our brain moves.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Then we need to train leaders to better understand what is going on with someone's brain like ours, and those like us, so that they don't see us as troublemakers, or as people who are too much or overbearing. They're able to dissect what's going on and use it for what it is, which I like to think of as a superpower.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I love that perspective. I think it's a very mature answer to some of the challenges that we're facing. There's definitely training involved on both ends. I love the movement that you guys are trying to start. It's we need to learn how to communicate with others because it is a big ask to say, "No, I want you to communicate with me the way I want to be communicated with." That's not fair to anybody, regardless of what side you're on.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): One of the really cool things that I've been involved in is feedback training and also personality assessments. I've always been a big fan of those, not to box you into "this is who you are," but it opens up conversations just like this to say, "How do you like to be communicated with? What are the things that tick you off?" It really helps create understanding on both ends so that you guys can come to an agreement and set expectations up front. I think that's probably one of the biggest things that anyone that's neurodivergent can do: set the expectations.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): It doesn't have to be in a way of "Hey, I've got this." I think it's real easy to fall into that trap. This is probably a really polarizing statement, but I've found that sometimes people use that as a crutch. It makes my blood boil, any kind of victim mentality. I love it when people call it a superpower because when used right, it definitely can be.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Kimmy, I don't mean to keep referencing my divorce and my ex-wife, but it was a moment in time where obviously a big life event. It was a big life event for me in such a positive way. We were not meant to be together. We produced two incredible children, but outside of that, she and I are very different people. Not that her way is right or wrong and my way is right and her way is... I'm kidding. I'm kidding. If she listened to that. But I'm kind of kidding, mostly not kidding.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): What it did was it forced me for a whole bunch of reasons to be like, "Maybe I was the fucking problem." I didn't think I was, but maybe I was, because something didn't work. In doing so, I went to counseling and all this kind of stuff. There was a woman that I dated for a little while. We're not together anymore, but she had an even... I don't want to say worse case, a more... I don't know how you would describe it, a higher level of ADHD. We went on a date and within 30 minutes, she looks at me and goes, "So you have ADHD."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I literally, no one had ever said that to me before. People had said ADD or whatever, but as a poke, not in a way where she wasn't asking to be a jerk. She was being honest. It was an honest question. I kind of said, "You know..." She goes, "That was kind of rhetorical. You 100% do." She wasn't being a jerk. We were just talking. So I saw my counselor that next week and I brought up this conversation that I had with her. She goes, "Oh yeah, I thought you knew that." I was like, "Holy shit, what does this even mean?"
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Then I had to go figure out because I don't even know what it means. I knew what the letters stand for, but I didn't know what it actually meant to my life or how my brain works. The very first thing that my counselor said is, "You cannot expect people to change the way they communicate with you. You have to change the way you communicate with them."
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): A hundred percent.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): To your point on a victim mentality, I don't care what happens to me in my life. The last thing in the world that I want to be is a fucking victim. So I was like, "Okay, great." I can tell you, Kimmy, this has been one of the most profound changes in my relationships with every single person: coworkers, children, my ex-wife, women that I may have dated, my parents, everybody. Now I can go into a conversation and be like, "Okay, Ryan, you have 30 minutes. Here's the topic that you're talking about." I keep notes. I now start making agendas to stay on track in places where it's appropriate.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I feel like it all of a sudden opens your whole world when you know that you have this thing and you can work on it. I want more people to feel comfortable having these conversations and working through these things, which is why I love that we're having this conversation.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): That hits the point. Just in general, regardless of whether someone's neurodivergent or not, having that ability to have those kind of conversations and give feedback... The timing on this couldn't be more perfect. Literally yesterday, and I posted this on LinkedIn too, I had a co-worker reach out to me and say, "Hey Kimmy, this is super unconventional, but can I reach out to you and give you some feedback?" I got so excited because he's the first one that's ever reached out to give me feedback. I'm like, "Ooh, what is it? What can I get better?"
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): It was around communication. I kind of knew what was coming. He said, "Kimmy, you have great ideas. You communicate well in certain channels, but maybe you can add some more context to your emails." I wasn't being detailed enough is what he was basically asking. First of all, props to him because he presented it in an amazing way. Two, it just reminded me, "Thank goodness I was taught to be learning based and be open to that kind of feedback," because that could have gone way differently if it was two different people having this conversation.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): It felt really good to have that happen. Imagine what the world would be like if we could teach people how to be open like that. Like you said, we can't go around asking, "Well, I'm this way, you need to communicate with me." Everybody has a certain way they want to be communicated with. It's up to us to say, "Okay, here's the thing."
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I grew up in a family of engineers, so you can imagine how different our personalities are. I had to learn social skills. I had to learn communication styles. That definitely was not stuff that came naturally. I'm still learning it. I'm not perfect by any means. I think that's how it is for most people. Confidence, communication, all of that is a learned skill over time.
--:-- [Host interjection plays]
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): You said that you were taught to be learning based. What does that mean? What did that look like? I love that concept. Maybe expand on that a little bit.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): My environment. It dates all the way back to my parents. They are both extremely intelligent and very open-minded. They did a really good job raising me and my little sister without labels, without telling us that we had to do one thing one way or another. They allowed us to be ourselves and still be very nurturing around that. For example, when I was diagnosed with Tourette's, they didn't make a big deal out of it. They were like, "Okay, it's just part of you."
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): And so that was the way I grew up. It's like, oh, it's just part of me, whatever. My mom allowed me to be creative. No one can see it on the podcast, but if you look me up on LinkedIn, I have purple hair. I had crazy hair and my mom let me do that since I was little, as long as I kept my room clean, of course. So she allowed me to be creative and be myself.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I've also just been really lucky, or have done a good job of surrounding myself with people that are similar, that are just very growth minded. That's what I mean by learning basis—people that understand that there's always room for improvement and your perspective isn't always the only one that exists. I think that was probably the biggest piece that my parents really helped drive home for me and my sister.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): In all the sensitive subjects like religion, political views, and things like that, I knew where my parents stood, but they never once told me I had to be that way, which was super respectable. Eventually I did adopt most of what they run with, but it was cool—it allowed me to explore other religions, other whatever, just to see what else is out there and kind of create and develop my own ideas about life. I think that if I didn't have that, I absolutely would not be who I am today. I hope I can leave that with people that I come in and interact with.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I love that. There's a couple of things in there. I had a different but similar upbringing. My father was a tremendous dad and a tremendous grandfather to my children, but for me, he was incredibly overbearing. It was my way or the highway. Unfortunately, he went to jail for about three years for drinking. When he was taken away, all of a sudden I got my mom 100%. My mom is more accept everyone. She has her views of life, and she shared those with me. We had lots of conversations. Where I had questions, where I had different thoughts, where I had different experiences, we talked about all that stuff and it was very open.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): She was probably doing a lot of things wrong according to a parenting book, but we were much more like friends. Obviously she was my mom and I treated her with respect, but we had a very friendly relationship outside of a more standardized 1950s parent-child relationship. It sounds like you were able to have open conversations that you might not have had otherwise.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Yes.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I think for so many people, they don't get that. They grow up thinking the world is a way and they get older and they do the thing that I probably dislike most in the world—they put their shit on other people. I actually just did a post about this that I'm going to expand upon in a blog. I basically said that if there's a secret to having good relationships, it's don't put your shit on other people. Your shit gets to be your shit. It's America. We're blessed that we were born in this country, but I feel like we've started to shy away from what freedom actually means.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): It used to mean I get to live my life and Kimmy gets to live her life and we can interact with each other. I love that Kimmy gets to live the way she gets to live, and Ryan gets to live the way he lives. It's great. We can interact and do all these things. Individuality. We have a few social constructs which allow us to interact in a healthy way, but otherwise you can do all your crazy shit and I can do all my crazy shit and everything's good.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I feel like we've gotten to a point where now freedom is I get to live how I want and Kimmy, you have to live how I want, or it's not freedom. I'm like, well, that doesn't really work because doesn't Kimmy get to think the exact same thing back? Then we get all this polarization and craziness. It's everywhere. There's no right side or wrong side, although one side is obviously wronger than the other.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I hate that because I think that permeates. I feel like people are less willing to be open in public because of this. They're less willing to share experiences with people. Our circles become tiny, tiny little circles and tiny, tiny little communities. Everything's velvet roped because we're so worried about people seeing who we are and then putting their shit on us. I really dislike that.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): When you are raised the way you were raised and kind of the way I was raised too, you grow up looking at that and it just feels wrong. Maybe I haven't known how to express it, and I've certainly expressed it in ways that were unproductive at times, but people shouldn't put their stuff on you. You shouldn't put your stuff on them. I think this goes so much for the way that we interact and why I love your story about this guy giving you feedback. I'll be quiet while I'm talking about storm today. I just love that.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Oh, sorry. No, no, no. I think it's great.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Was it a judgment of you?
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Not at all. It was a "Hey, here's a way for you to be more productive if you want to be this." That to me is a hundred percent the right way to do this. He did it because he cares. I think that was the big thing. I was taught that when you are giving feedback, that's honestly the best way to have a hard conversation with somebody—"Hey, I need to have a hard conversation with you. Please know it's because I love you or it's because I care. This is not to hurt you as a person. It's addressing the situation or the act or the action."
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I love everything that you just said within the last five minutes because it ties back to everything we said at the beginning. We can't expect people to communicate with us the way we want, just like people can't expect people to live their life the way they want them to live. This could be a whole podcast on this topic itself. What I've found these days is that people are very scared to voice their opinions. I am a very agreeable person, but I am very opinionated in the things that I am passionate about. I've found, especially in the workplace, when people need to give feedback, they get scared.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Because of the way—and we can blame it on social media, we can blame it on whatever we want—people do get ganged up on when you stand out. Maybe you can relate to this with your ADHD—I've grown up standing out. So to me, it's no different when you do get singled out, and not being afraid of that. Not everybody has had that experience. I had to humble myself and go, "Okay, Kimmy, not everyone has opened a business." When I'm talking to people about sales or managing something, I have to remember, "Oh my goodness, I'm coming at it from a completely different perspective. Not everyone's run a business. Not everyone's gone through the experiences that I've gone through."
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I think having that perspective, regardless of what topic you're talking about, is really the key. That's what would help these people feeling polarized. Not everyone's going to agree. Some of my best friends have the complete opposite political and religious views, but we're good friends. We just know, "Hey, you believe one thing. I believe one thing. You voted for so-and-so." But we're still friends at the end of the day because we're kind and we respect each other. That word respect really resonates with me.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I read an article a while back where they interviewed couples—people that have been married for 50 years, people that got divorced. They did this whole long interview, and at the end of the day, it all came back down to respect. The ones that have been together forever, they just have this respect that has been there for so long. The ones that got divorced lost the respect. Regardless of the dynamic you have with somebody, whether it's at work or a romantic relationship, that respect piece is absolutely paramount to having a productive conversation.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I couldn't agree more. One of the things that I've had to work with some of my younger employees on, especially my younger leaders, is that you don't get respect and you don't deserve respect. It's earned over time. The best way to earn it is to give it as much as you possibly can as often as you can to other people. Over time, it will come back to you.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Unfortunately, call it social media, call it liberals, call it right orthodoxy—people feel like because they show up and they have an opinion, we all need to just respect them. Or "My job title is this, so I deserve respect." Or "I'm this demographic group." Even people in the neurodiversity community—we're not immune to that either.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): A hundred percent.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): No, you don't. You earn it. How much have you given out? Are you respectful of your three team members? Are you treating them? Are you understanding the way they want to be communicated with? Are you listening to them? Are you taking the garbage out? Leaders take the garbage out. If you're not, then you don't deserve respect. There's a reason they're talking behind your back—because you haven't done the work.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Or you haven't opened up enough to them for them to take the time to respect you and your vision.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I want to go back to something you said that I completely agree with and I would like to poke at a little more—this idea that when you've always felt different, being different isn't hard. I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but I think that's essentially what you said. I could not agree with that more. Despite being a six-foot-four white guy—
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): You're six-foot-four? Everyone thinks I'm like five-one. That's crazy. You're tall.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, I have to put hashtag tall in my bio so people know. I can't tell you how many conferences I've been to and people are like, "I thought you were going to be short." Despite being a white dude from the North, I have always felt different my entire life. I've never been an insider. I've never felt like I was in the cool kids club. I've never felt like I was easily accepted. I've always been a little different. There's a whole bunch of reasons for that I won't get into.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Now as an adult at 42, I've hit an age where I just don't give a fuck anymore. Couple that with being rewarded today—today's society and where I am in my career—having different ideas, delivered respectfully, which I have not always done, just to be clear, is like a gift. I can't even think what it would be like to be a best practices agency. I think it's cute that people are best practices agencies. If you're a best practice agency, I know exactly how to beat you.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): If you are living by the same rules that everyone else lives by, that's nice, but you are also way more vulnerable. I hope that conversations like this one show people that with respect and appreciation for the people you're communicating with, you don't just get to be an asshole because you feel different or have a different opinion. That is something you should cultivate and be proud of and surround yourself with other people that feel that way. I think employers are looking for people who can think differently and do it in a way that isn't being a jerk.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I do agree with everything that you said. I think there's two parts to this. These days, being different has become mainstream. Shit, now I need to become a conformist.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): No, don't do that.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): No. But I tread lightly with that because it's used in a victim way from a lot of what I'm seeing. Let's say, "Oh, I've got Tourette's and I think it's cool, but you need to treat me different because I'm different." That was really elementary, but that's basically what I'm getting at. You'll see posts, or if you go to a restaurant and listen to conversations around you, it boggles my mind how some people talk to each other.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): While you're thinking about that, I think a lot of people, instead of doing the really hard work of figuring out how to maximize the things that make them different, are way more willing to use those as crutches to get shallow feedback and shallow victories that make them feel better. They'll post something on social media about whatever their thing that they want to be victimized about is to get likes. "Oh, you're great the way you are."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I'm probably a Jordan Peterson disciple at this point. Outside of God, I think his methodology for living is right up there with Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics. He has this clip that's passed around social media all the time from his book *12 Rules for Life*. He basically says, "You're not good enough." Everybody wants to tell people you're good enough. You're not. Why are you good enough? So you have this thing about you. It doesn't mean that you're perfect the way you are. It doesn't mean that you're good enough the way you are. It doesn't mean you should hate yourself. But it certainly doesn't mean that you shouldn't commit yourself to constantly working to improve.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I feel like people find a thing that gives them an out or a ripcord, and then they just lean on that thing. You could have so easily taken the fact that you have Tourette's and had your life be half of what it is today because you used it as a crutch or a tool to get some sort of shallow victory when you needed it. But you obviously didn't. You plowed through it. You learned how to become a musician. You learned how to become a champion bowler. You pushed through it and you constantly improved, which I think should be held on the highest level of respect.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): But I think too often we find a thing that gives us a shallow victory that we can play as a victim thing. "I have inflammation" or "I get migraines." All these things are shitty, don't get me wrong. But then I met a guy I was speaking in North Carolina years ago. His name was Sergeant—oh my gosh, it's going to kill me—he had an arm and both legs blown off in the war. This dude, if you see him, he's got a big smile on his face. He's still married. He's got two kids. He's got this badass truck that he had rigged out. He does speaking gigs. He's funny as hell.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): He came on stage. I'm not going to do it justice, but this dude could have just laid in bed, become a 400-pound blimp and said, "Because of all these things that happened to me, none of this is my fault." And he didn't. He's got an apparel company that uses the proceeds to help veterans with depression and veterans who've lost limbs. He starts the talk, he walks out, he's standing there, he's kind of looking at everybody, deadpanning it. Then he looks down at his crotch and goes, "I know what you're all thinking. And it's still there." The whole place just started laughing because you see this guy come up and your first instinct is he's going to be depressed. And he wasn't.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I was like, "Oh my God, if that dude can—" and I'm sure he has bad days too, don't get me wrong. But for that dude to be a Marine, top of your life, physical fitness, badass, and to come home and still have that mentality—I'm like, God. I got a couple of conversations happening in my brain. I think I'm doing all right.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Shout out to you for using that as inspiration. People with a victim mentality would see that and go, "Well, that won't happen to me" or "I'm not at that level" and start making up this story in their head. So shout out to you for using that for inspiration. I love that you brought up the *12 Rules for Life*, Jordan Peterson. I have a funny story I have to share because not many people follow him since he is a polarizing guy.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I bought my boyfriend a mug—12 Rules for Life mug off of Amazon—thinking it was the Jordan Peterson 12 Rules for Life. I didn't even read it. I just bought it because it said "12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson mug." Ryan, this is literally what it says. The last two are the most hilarious. Number 11: "Do not bother children while they're skateboarding." Number 12: "Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street." Those are not the rules. Someone literally put these on there. I was like, "Oh my gosh." But it was hilarious.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): That would be the most skewed derivatives of what he's actually trying to teach. I actually think it's hilarious though. I save a lot of stuff. I'm kind of crazy with it. I love to be inspired. I love to take in people. I've broken the TikTok algorithm because it doesn't show me any negative shit. If it's negative, I just skip it. I can just consume.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): You should teach a class on that. That's the problem—people get bombarded with this junk.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I'm just not interested in negativity. I hate negativity. It couldn't be more of a turnoff, not just in a partner, but in another human that I interact with when they're negative. I just cannot stand it. I don't tolerate it. If someone's going to be negative—we all have moments, right? That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a lifestyle of negativity. It couldn't be more of a turnoff to me. So what? You can call out shit that's bad. Good for you. That's not a positive characteristic. You're not smarter because—people be like, "Well, I'm a realist." No, you're an asshole. Life is hard. We all get it. We wake up every day. But how about we start to figure out better ways to operate?
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I have this one that I save. I'll go through a few of them in my saved list on Instagram. One of the ones that I watch almost every day is by Jordan Peterson. It's this idea—he's being interviewed and the guy says, "You're telling men to be monsters." And he's like, "Yes." The guy is kind of incredulous, probably a liberal. Jordan Peterson's like, "What? So be weak? That's what we want? We want weak people, weak men?" Specifically, he's talking about men in our society today. He goes, "No. You should be an absolute killer monster and then learn how to control it."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): He said, "There's no virtue in being weak. If you're weak, it's easy to be weak and to be deferential and to be a beta. But if you're an absolute killer and you're able to control it and make the decision to be better and to be a good person despite the fact that inside you is a monster, there's real virtue in that." That to me is something that I hold in my brain every day. I wasn't in the military. I don't know how to do jujitsu. I have no idea how I would act in a situation that required you to be a monster. But the concept—be the most powerful, dominant thing you can be, and I think this goes for women too—and then figure out how to be a better version of you with that inside you. That's where real virtue lies.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): To me, that speaks to the victimhood mentality. It speaks to constant improvement. It speaks to self-awareness. It speaks to respect. It speaks to understanding how to operate with personal agency, which is something we do not talk about at all in our society enough—what personal agency means and how important it is. I don't know how the hell we got that far down that rabbit hole, but I honestly think this should become a second episode. We should definitely schedule a second one and go deeper into this. This is fun.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): For sure. You've got an open invitation whenever you want to come back. I feel like we're just scratching the surface.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I want to be respectful of your time and of the audience. Let me hit you with a couple of things. Do you think that your desire to take on these hobbies—fairly intense things like being a musician—do you think that's part of a way of dealing? Do you think that's who you are? Do you think it's part of a way of dealing with the way that your mind works? I know I've found that in my own life. I research shit. If I get something on my brain, I have to research it really hard. It's just the way that I work because of the way my brain works. Do you think that's the same for you?
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I think so. I think a lot of it is because it's hard for me to just sit tight. My brain wants to do something. Rather than doing the research, I just go and take action. I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to go try this thing. If I fail miserably, eh, whatever. I learned something." But I'm always looking for something new. When I do it, I want to be the best I can be at it. That's where the competitive nature comes in. I enjoy recognition. I enjoy being a winner. So I find something, I'm like, "Okay, let's go do it the best we can."
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I think a lot of it is just like you said—the way my brain works. Thank goodness because of my environment. My mom was really encouraging to try new things. She literally said, "You can't say you don't like it until you try it." I remember she had me play soccer. I hated soccer. But eventually I tried softball and loved that. Because she was constantly pushing "just try it," I brought that into the rest of my life. Thanks Mom and Dad. A lot of it goes back to that.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I think that you're a testament to how someone can be quote-unquote different—I'm doing air quotes, you can't see me—but also highly successful. I probably talked too much, but I was just excited to talk to you. We will absolutely do this again. I know you have to run. I'll make sure I have your LinkedIn on the show notes. People should definitely follow Kimmy on LinkedIn. Where else would you like to send them?
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I'm on all the socials—Facebook, Instagram. The good news is I have a really unique name: Kimiko Donahue. I haven't found anyone else with that name yet. Definitely look forward to connecting with everyone. Thank you so much for this, Ryan. This was super cool.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it and I look forward to the next time. Have a great one.
--:-- Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Awesome. Bye.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Bye.
--:-- [Promotional message plays]
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