Kay:
Hey there, family. Welcome to the Kay & Shi how. This week, we are talking all about the ships.
Shi:
All kinds of ships in our life. We can’t wait to address four of them this week. We are starting off with the ship of leadership and now you can tell what we’re talking about. We’re not obviously actual sailors or ship enthusiasts in the slightest, but we are big fans of all of the words that end with ships and we wanted to feature four of them this week. There will probably be four more in another week, but starting off with leadership, we think is probably the most important one.
Kay:
Well, leadership is one of our favorite topics in general, but we wanted to start out with leadership today because, in fact, many of us find that the hardest person to lead is ourselves.
Shi:
Right. I was thinking conceptually about our podcast today and just reflecting on how much it’s fun to teach, but it’s also fun for us to come here and be able to just have a conversation about where we are on our voyage and journey through navigating, growing through all kinds of different things, including learning the things that we bring forward. So just, you know, side note, thanks for being an ear for us and we gain as much benefit as we hope value, we’re providing to you. I think that’s kind of the nature of the relationship of that leadership of the self that we really wanted to bring forward when we said what’s the most important thing we know. Most of us know it’s an internal game and so we’ve got to play that internal game and that means self-leadership.
Kay:
Self-leadership can be so difficult because it’s between you and you. The battles don’t happen on the field of life. The battles happen in between your ears, and no one knows you better than yourself. So, you are a master at manipulating yourself.
Shi:
Yeah, and jabbing yourself and beating yourself up and justifying things. We really are masters in there and when we think about the concept of leadership, just so that we’re all talking about it, we’re really thinking of it in terms of being able to influence behavior. Being able to choose the direction and move the energy-momentum and action in that direction, aka having influence over behavior. And so that leadership of the self really, are you influencing yourself to take the behaviors that you want in order to get what you want.
Kay:
What I love about that influence is that your ability to influence yourself and to influence others directly affects the outcomes that you have in your life. So, if you look around at your life and your like, man, I don’t like the way that things are going, might be good to check out the ship of leader.
Shi:
Right. This might be one of the ships that you want to dock for a while and renovate and get into a better place and that does take time and intention. We all have different motivations and ways that we are able to complete things and ultimately influence ourselves to take desired behaviors. But I know for us one of the ways is (a) picking one specific thing and trying to work on that versus having a vague general idea of who that perfect person is. Well, what are those behaviors that that perfect person does? They work out, they drink water, they sleep, they have balance and harmony within their family and their relationships. They’re authentic to who they are. And so, by being able to start to identify those things, now we can say, “Okay, well, what are the behaviors then that demonstrate that character?”
Kay:
As you begin to demonstrate that character as well through your behavior change, you gain the capacity to then go out and lead other people in those arenas and to cause that change in others as well. That’s where the traditional sense of leadership kind of comes into play. It makes me think of and will likely talk about this in the relationship section of the podcast. But you know, you can only love others at the capacity with which you love yourself and leadership works very similarly. You can only lead others at the capacity with which you can lead yourself.
Shi:
Oh gosh, I love that, and when it comes to knowing what motivates yourself and leading yourself, influencing yourself. I love kind of bringing forward that concept of what are some of the things that motivate you? What are some of the things that do make you feel momentum towards taking action? I think it was Zig Ziglar who said motivation is like showering. That’s why we recommend it once a day. Finding something that fires you up, whether it’s exercise or meditation or time in nature, or time on your bike, or rocking out with your instrument. Everybody’s got that thing but what are some of those things that you can do that help fuel that fire every day, not once in a while, but every day so that you have that built in so you can continue to have that influence.
Kay:
Well, lighting that flame for yourself so you can light that flame for others is really the essence of the leadership and we’re excited to be here in ships week. Next up we’re going to talk about partnerships.
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Shi:
Now, docking in partner ships. Welcome aboard. This is ships week and yeah, in the last segment we talked about leadership. We’re excited now to talk about partnerships, something we obviously know a little bit about.
Kay:
Well, we are so blessed to have a partnership in one another and talk often amongst each other about how grateful we are that we have someone that we can lean on and trust and that really has not that mindset of the 50/50, but that both people bring their 100/100 to the table.
Shi:
And I think that’s one of the things that ultimately help partnerships be successful and we’re going to talk about the romantic expression of partnerships and kind of those long term, significant others a little bit later towards the end of this episode. But talking right now about partnerships in the sense of working relationships and career-wise–thinking into those things–these are the ships that I think are hardest to build for a lot of people and I think that’s because–going into a business partnership–the nature of that relationship goes in a direction that if you haven’t been in partnerships before, it can feel really abrupt and jolting. So, it’s definitely one of those harder ships to build for sure.
Kay:
So, when the partnership is from a business perspective, I think it becomes even more important that idea of’’like I mentioned before’’that both parties bring their 100/100 to the table because a partnership in a business sense can easily breed resentment if one party isn’t pulling their weight.
Shi:
Well. So, some of the things we’ve learned about being in a partnership, and of course we’re still in partnership, also, not just with each other, but with my husband, Chad, and with our parents within the Squeeze In and we had a lot of years being a family business partnership like that, as well as entering into other partnerships and business ideas and things. So, we’ve had a lot of experience with it and a lot of it’s been positive and a lot of it’s been challenging. So, it is one of those things that we always encourage others like you’re going to do business with other people, or you’re going to form partnerships with other people. Do that with people that you trust and that you have a match with in values. I wish that was something that maybe we would’ve underscored earlier on if we could go back and do things again.
Kay:
The values match when it comes to partnerships is really important because when you don’t have the same value set going forward into a business setting oftentimes that can clash in the middle of things that can make it messy and business is oftentimes met with legality. So, you end up getting into contracts and how they need to get spelled out. So, you’re either extremely careful in the contracting process which you should be prudent in that. But the back end of that when you don’t enter in with the same value set can be difficult to rectify and then it all leans on the documentation that you’ve put forward in the first place.
Shi:
Those long agreements and things you wanted to breeze over and not read all the way through can sometimes come back around and you can be like, oh, you get taken on a technicality or something and we have to remember that as much as business is that rational side of us, there is also the emotional side and there’s no way you can’t form an emotional connection with someone that you have a business partnership with. So, that’s where I think things start to get messy if you don’t have that clear definition of roles, of goals, of values, of understanding what the future is and you can’t always understand. Sometimes it’s knowing what the first step is which is why one of our recommendations–before moving into partnership–would always be to do a collaboration with someone first. Find a way to do a project together, to bring a product forward, to have a shared challenge, or something that you can do that has an end date and a split date. That way you get a little dating period and I think that’s a big miss for a lot of folks. I know that was a miss for us in certain interactions over our last 19 years and 15 years of active business on this side of things would be something I wish we maybe would’ve considered more in the beginning.
Kay:
Oh, that is a really good point Shi, and when we get down to the partnerships of the people that you work with every day, right. That arm-in-arm human being who’s right there. I mean, it’s interesting how much overlap there is with the kind of best practices for romantic relationships. Things like open lines of communication, having frank discussions, not bottling emotions. When you work with somebody in a very close capacity, you partner alongside someone and this isn’t necessarily just in a business ownership standpoint, maybe this is a really close manager that you work with at your job. Maybe this is a coworker that you’ve gotten paired with. Maybe you’re a student and you understand how you sometimes have to partner with people on long term projects over the course of an entire quarter or half of a year and those kinds of partnerships require very similar upkeep to a romantic relationship which just goes to underscore the fact that really you get involved, which means your emotions are at play no matter what kind of partnership you’re in.
Shi:
What I love is what that means really is that these best practices are simple and applicable across all kinds of different ships, and I look forward to applying them to our next ship, pulling into the harbor, friendship harbor.
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Kay:
We are so proud to have just recently launched the brand-new version of kayandshi.com.
Shi:
Now announcing the brand-new website. It’s kayandshi.com. We would love for you to go over and check it out. We started it longer than we’re proud to admit and it’s taken quite a while to get over the finish line and, of course, it’ll always be a work in progress. But it’s so great to have the new website up and what’s even more fun than that is the fact that when you go there, there’s a pretty special surprise for you.
Kay:
The surprise is… Drum roll, please. We’ve had access to some incredible people in our journey and we have created a celebrity interview series bringing their knowledge to you.
Shi:
People like John Maxwell, Dr. Bruce Lipton. We’ve gotten America’s super nanny Debra Tillman and more. So go check out the new website, get the celebrity interview series. It’s exclusive. There’s some never-before-seen stuff back there and we look forward to hearing how you like it but let’s get back to ship week.
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Kay:
Alright, we are pulling in once again to the dock here on ship week.
Shi:
Yep. We are in friendship harbor, and we are excited to talk about the ship that I think a lot of us find a lot of comfort in and that is in friendships.
Kay:
Now, one of the things that I love about Shila, and I is that we have two different sides of the friendship spectrum. Now, Shila is incredibly social, and I’ll let you talk about how your beautiful relationships came forward with your like trillion best friends.` Kay here, I have like one best friend outside of my sister and that’s pretty much it and I’m definitely more of an introverted human. So, friendships are both deep for us but have different meanings and they play out differently in our lives.
Shi:
Well, coming at you, Professor Shi here for a minute. What we know is that humans thrive in groups and that they thrive on connection and that the impact of even just one close connection with someone that you would consider a friend gives enough of a sense of belonging to reduce suicide rates by incredible amounts and feelings of loneliness and self-harm and suicidal thoughts and all of those things. So, whether it’s one friend or a dozen just having someone under the friendship spectrum is really important to your health overall as a human being and that wellbeing. But yes, you’re right Kay, I have a large group of friends. We had 11 bridesmaids from a wonderful group of women that I started going to school with when I was nine years old and by the time we were in high school, there were nine of us. We have a title, we have numbers, we have nicknames. There’s a secret initiation. Just kidding, there’s not one of those but we’re called the Ditz crew and through the ups and downs we’ve been there for each other, and I’ve always really enjoyed having this close-knit of nearly 10 women as my friends.
Kay:
It’s really amazing to have seen that play out in your life too. But man, that is a busy set of friends for somebody like me who’s a little bit more from a networking perspective, the introverted side. It’s funny. I was just telling somebody last night how oftentimes in networking situations where we’ve got to talk to people, I cling to Shila for dear life. Because while extroversion is an easy thing for me, I am definitely more naturally introverted. And so, I have one very close friend outside of Shila.
Shi:
Shout out to Victoria.
Kay:
Hey Victoria. Yes. I was about to say her name is Victoria. She’s amazing. We’ve been best friends since we were 15 years old and have carried on a relationship that we’re very proud of, and it’s taken a lot of intention over the years to manifest and keep that relationship going. And to me, it seems crazy to do that times 10, but it’s amazing how the idea of friendship plays out in both of our lives.
Shi:
It does and you know, the 10 of us, there’s definitely pairs off and other little trios and such, but we are a collective and we communicate in a collective and I think that’s been part of the strength for us. But I think that idea of intention that you just brought forward, Kay, is probably the most important piece in differentiating between the–I want to call them–proxy friends. You take a class with somebody, you become friends over the semester.
Kay:
Between places.
Shi:
Yeah. Right. You’re friendly for a while because you have a shared experience, or you work together somewhere. But as time fades that doesn’t really continue forward because neither one of you brought enough intentional energy forward to progress that. And there’s nothing wrong with that because our life needs those kinds of friendships in our life. Then there is that other side that Kay and I are talking about with those close friendships that go across time because you intentionally invest in that time with those friends.
Kay:
Yep. I mean, I’ll be the first to admit that Victoria and I have gotten in fights. We’ve had to work things out. We’ve had to have conversations and make compromises and find time for each other when we’re busy and make the effort for that particular friendship. If you have the expectation that friendship is a lot of work, sometimes it is and that’s okay and I think there is an expectation that friendship’s going to be perfect, right? Kind of like the first six months of a relationship…
Shi:
Yeah.
Kay:
…but then forever and it is like any other relationship, which means it takes upkeep.
Shi:
It does and it’s not always easy to spend the money and commit the time to go travel on a friend’s trip or go see someone or especially if you’ve got friends that move away as they do, as you get older, then it really takes intentional planning and commitment. But boy, is it worth it and we love how Michelle Obama really underscores this as well in her book, of course, that we love, and you’ve heard us feature before our book “Becoming.” But her having a really strong group of friends that she met primarily in college, and they’ve intentionally kept it forward. You can just see how they’ve been this level of support and this ability to provide that sense of security and belonging no matter what, how important that can be for people. And I just love the way she shared that, and the studies show, the research shows friendships are really important. So be it one or be it many here’s to your friendships today as we pull out of this harbor and into our last kind of meta harbor of the week.
Kay:
Oh-ooh.
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Shi:
Are you tired of the ship week puns yet? Well, we hope you’re not because there’s just one more and today, we want to talk about relationships.
Kay:
We’re talking about the romance, the hot and steamy. You know, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your husband, your wife, your at-home romantic partner, the person who you spend that love side of your life with.
Shi:
If you push your glasses up your nose, you call it your significant other.
Kay:
Okay. Professor Shi over here.
Shi:
Well, whatever that significant other is for you, we want to talk about, I think the nature of this, kind of that personal partnership that you form with somebody that ends up being your long-term relationship. This is a relationship of support, endurance, compromise, of joy.
Kay:
Intimacy.
Shi:
Oh. Come on, that’s one of the best parts and one of the things that makes it different than any of the other ships in the h arbor we’ve talked about this week.
Kay:
Well, the relationship in your life is one of those things that can add so much flavor and depth and talk about security when you can maintain that for a level of time. In fact, a relationship for so many people provides so much security that many men and women will stay in an abusive relationship just because of the security that it provides.
Shi:
Right. Or that certainty, that known. Like I’m not happy, but at least I know it and that makes me in some ways comfortable. Even if I’m a little bit uncomfortable, the idea of the uncomfortableness that comes with making a change can be so hard that I’d rather just stay certain and comfortable in my un-comfortability. Then that can be a detriment I know to human growth, to personal growth, to relationship growth and so it takes someone being brave and having courage to say, I’m going to change me first as Tony Robbins likes to say, and then if that doesn’t work, change the relationship. But working on ourselves is what we talked about at the beginning here of ship week and ending here with that. Once you’ve got that figured out can really work on that side by side with another person. It can be a really amazing kind of relationship that blossoms as time goes on.
Kay:
Now, Shila and I have at this point. Both of us have put in our 10,000 hours…
Shi:
Yeah.
Kay:
…on at the relationship front. We were just recently regaling, just how freaking long it’s been that you and Chad have been together.
Shi:
Yes. It’s been a long time. We’re celebrating our 16th wedding anniversary in June of this year, and we’re really excited about that. We’re actually celebrating it on an amazing Mediterranean cruise, which you guys will all hear about later at some point. But we have had a lot of ups and downs and a lot of challenges. We’ve actually also worked together most of that marriage and time which can add a different element. But it’s so nice to have that person that when you’re sick, they bring the tissue box and they care about you and when you are so happy and have a big win, they’re the first person you want to call. And when you’ve got kids together and you’ve got somebody that you can rely on and you know the code and all of the words and the lingo and the jargon and the mechanics of what it takes to implement a family, it feels really good to have a life partner like that.
Kay:
It really does. It’s been amazing to see you and Chad’s relationship. So, 16 years married and how many years together?
Shi:
18.
Kay:
Oh my gosh. It’s kind of wow. Coming up on 20 years, that is craziness, Danny and I have 12 years together, which is crazy, a dozen years…
Shi:
Amazing.
Kay:
…and then we’re coming up on our ninth wedding anniversary. Our 10th wedding anniversary will be in 2023. But crazy to think it’s been almost 10 years that we’ve been married. It feels like that time has flown by and also there has been so much that has happened, but at the beginning of this week during leadership, I talked a little bit about that idea or partnerships that you can’t love someone at the capacity with which you don’t love yourself. Just in this last year, my relationship went through a humongous transition when Danny decided to embrace the full side of themselves as a non-binary person which means my man is definitely more feminine. But one of the best things about that is that he decided that he was going to love himself as he truly is and that really opened up love for me within the relationship from him as the partner, which just so underscored and demonstrated to me the power of loving yourself first.
Shi:
Yes, and it’s been so amazing to watch this unfold over the last year, plus at this point for the two of you and seeing that true transformation and demonstration of, you know, if that tiny cup inside of you for self-love is a shot glass and you go to fill up somebody else’s cup and that’s all the love you’ve got to give. That’s not very much. It’s a sprinkle for a cup like you, that’s this ginormous ocean.
Kay:
We take all the love.
Shi:
And seeing Danny be able to truly become their full selves. It’s been so beautiful and fun just to watch your relationship in that way blossom. I know early on when he first told you and it was difficult, we talked about the idea of you fell in love with a human being and a person, not necessarily a societally ascribed gender identity. Being able to understand that I think helps underscore for whether you’re going through a “my person came out as non-binary”–or any kind of–”my person is growing differently than me or aging differently than me or drifting differently than me,” that there has to be that authenticity piece that’s supported and that you love that person no matter what. Because sometimes at the end of the day, you really just have to rely on the fact that you’ve committed to each other because it’s not always going to be about that love and fun-ness and that feeling.
Kay:
Right. The first six months of the relationship are only the first six months of the relationship. Everything else from there forward takes intentional effort, both in loving yourself and loving the other person. So, we hope that you have enjoyed the ship week here on the Kay & Shi Show. What do you think Shi? Should we take these ships out to sea?
Shi:
We should. Let’s pull them out of the harbor. Let’s set sail. Ahoy mateys. Here we go.
