004 - On Listening

Good morning Asheville. Today's Thursday, October 24th. At the time of recording we're in the mid-50s. Highs in the maybe low 70s. Might break 70, 71. Looking to be a perfect fall day in the myscon geniality sense. I've always loved October 24th as a perfect fall day. Not too cold, not too hot. All you need is a light switch sweater. Also happens to be my birthday, so maybe I'm biased. Alas, this weekend and I'm Tony Hubertaccio, I'm your host this week. Today we've iterated on this daily pod concept. Today I'm bringing you a slightly nuanced approach. I'm going to leave you off with a quote. And this quote comes from an email I received from the West Asheville yoga folks and I thought it was beautiful. And so they closed a very thoughtful email with this the other day. Just want to quickly read it for you and set the tone. There's wisdom in this space. There's a tension between the need to move forward and the desire not to rush before we're ready. And there's hope, hope that this event will in time lead to a better outcome for our town. A chance to reflect and rebuild around what truly matters. Beautiful. And the theme of today's episode is listening. And so I just want to I'm going to hit it in a couple different angles. One, I want to make it clear that though this is a podcast and it's coming out in one direction, I am listening. And so I'm trying to keep my ears open, my eyes open and I want an ideal world that you are sending me things to either discuss, to share, to highlight, to point out. And so I'm listening and speaking, but I'm listening. And in that vein, tomorrow, Friday the 25th, the folks it's collaboration. Jeff Kaplan's leading IT venture, Asheville, Asheville Chamber of Business Hatch co working is hosting a quote unquote business listening session. The concept and I'm not, we're not here to sell it. I believe that they're already like over capacity for the space that they're going to be hosting session in. But the concept is bring business owners in, ask questions and listen. And I think that that's really, really compelling. I think that the concept is compelling. I've not exactly heard it before used but I think it's special. In part I've said this to anyone who will listen that the best wedding present I've ever received was a gift of language from my business coach who said who Was the first introduced me to the concept of clarifying how you are showing up to certain conversations, to certain feedback conversations especially. And so language that we use in our house is like, hey, are you asking me to hear you help you or handle this problem? And with just those words, the three H's and something I've added recently a fourth which is like, do you need me just to be here with you here you help you or handle this problem by clarifying the context with which you want me to show up? I can do those things and give you what you need. And I think it's really hard. I'll speak for myself. My tendency is to want to help or handle things. My tendency is not to just be here with someone and just sit in it. My tendency is not even to really just listen with my whole ears because my bias is towards some level of action. Let me help you or handle this. And knowing what your bias is and knowing that that's not what everyone always all the time needs, I think can be a superpower. This is incredible gift, a gift of awareness, a gift of presence, a gift of listening. And so I think that, you know, these organizations, Asheville or Venture Asheville, Asheville Chamber of Business and Hatch Co Working combining on a listening session is something I'm very into. I'm very into the what that means or what that stands for or what that might point towards, which is just like a. I'm at work. They're actually here to eventually or in present tense give you what you need. And for some people that's just a place to. To speak, a place to share. And as a point, as a way to illustrate that I was on a. I was on the buy side of a sales call yesterday with an organization that I generally really appreciate and like and one day I think intend to potentially spend money with. And the salesperson lives in North Carolina and the salesperson is familiar with Asheville. And the salesperson when realizing I have an 828 number and you said, you know, I'm from Asheville, where are you from? Didn't ask like any meaningful questions or asked potentially bad questions and then didn't listen to what I was saying about, you know, the state of things. And so there's this gun, there's going to be this window that we live in, this kind of liminal, this transition, this stage where people are going to be in very different emotional spaces. And I think a superpower is going to be our ability to listen and to read the room and to read how people are Acting, feeling, responding. And so a gift to you is this language of do you want me here with you? Do you want me to hear you? Do you want me to help you? Do you want me to handle this just so that I'm showing up the way that you need me right now, person that I care about. And with that, a thing that I learned in the pandemic is I personally, I stopped asking people, how are you? I stopped asking questions I didn't actually want the answer to or I didn't want someone to have to lie to me when they answered their question. Instead, I started using, wow, it's really great to see you. It's really great that we're here together. It's really great to see you. And so gift of language and a gift of listening. I hope that that resonates with you in that vein. You know, I was listening at a business owner, Asheville based business owner reach out. We caught up and I said, like what, you know, what's going on? How, what is, what could be useful? What do you, you know, caught up on? And her answer was, I feel so overwhelmed by my inbox, I don't even want to look at it. It, it's, it's gotten too bad. Do you have any ideas? What should I do? And I said, well, I definitely have some ideas. I have two, I have two easy ideas. I could go on for hours. I've built out a whole email inbox course in the past. And so the two best ideas for how to make sense of an inbox at a state like we are in right now is one, and this is the most extreme, it's to file inbox bankruptcy, which is language. It just means nuke it, start over. And there are a bunch of ways to do it. Control all, hit all, all, unread all, whatever and send it to archive. Most people are on Google inbox, you have so much space. Typically send it to archive, you can search for things and if there's something important, you might find it, but it'll show back up. And so what I've recommended in the past or you know, edited it for this, it's like, hey, in the wake of Hurricane Helene, my inbox has become completely inundated. And I've decided that the best course forward is to start over. If you send or have sent me an email between 9:26 and 11. One, please consider it lost in the flood. I'll resume my regular inbox hygiene plan in November. That can be set as your autoresponder, that can go out to all of your email contacts that can that can sit in the signature of your emails. When you start sending emails again, there is no wrong way to do it. But like feel no stress. Anything that's important will show back up. Anything that's client facing, vendor facing, actual meaningful will find a way to get back into your inbox. Otherwise it wasn't that meaningful. So you know, don't tell yourself a story that everything needs to be perfect. Just start over. Another idea is that you can hit you can search for the word unsubscribe. When an email has the word unsubscribe in it, it is almost certainly marketing email and not that important. So by searching for the word unsubscribe you can then do a wholesale archived slash delete slash foldering of these generally unimportant emails and then go from there. You turn that into a filter and have those emails miss your inbox or have those emails get tagged on their way into your inbox. So you know, okay, these are marketing things. I can throw those over there. But searching for the word unsubscribe is a very powerful filter through which and lens through which to see the rest of your emails. And that's it for today's so next week we're going to do I'm going to get the responses from tomorrow's listening session with Venture, Asheville and the Chamber and we're going to review some of those needs that the community is speaking about that business owners are asking for an attempt to incorporate some of those concepts into the themes of next week's content. And I am setting out to do a deep ish dive the Mission Health Response in the wake of the hurricane, my wife had a procedure that ended up being at Mission. Crazy to say, but very inspired by the early parts of the stories that I'm hearing coming out of Mission and would love if you have a context or more information that you send that in so I can compile it and do my best to make sense of what all they did so that our community would have access to hygienic health during an emergency. Okay. Lastly, just a reminder, I am listening so if you have needs questions, concerns please send them in@helloakingitinasheville.com you can find me on Instagram making it in Asheville and just know you know again listening here to help tell me what you need and until tomorrow be good to people and take care.