Why Overly Human?
Traci and Rob discuss the reasons behind the podcast and their common bond over the need for more humanity in the workplace.
Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to the Overly Human podcast where we discuss all things human in the workplace. Because it's not just business—it's personal, too.
Rob:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Overly Human podcast. I am so excited you're here. I'm Rob Harr and my cohost is Traci Barrett.
Hi, Traci.
Traci:
Hi, Rob.
Rob:
How are you?
Traci:
I'm good. How are you? I'm super excited.
Rob:
I am so excited about this. I think in this first episode, what I'd like to do is just give some background of who we are, why we're here, how did we meet, what we've planned on doing this first season, why we're excited about this, and just some of our basic beliefs about these things. So I think we ought to start with who we are. So go ahead, Traci. I'd love for you to spend a couple minutes who you are, where do you work, all that fun stuff. What do we need to know about you?
Traci:
So I work at Navigate the Journey, which is a business consulting firm that I started with my husband, Tom Barrett. And we come alongside entrepreneurial-type companies and we help them with business plans, strategic planning, using processes like EOS, which is from the book Traction, which I know you know about, and a lot of people know about. We also do leadership development. We do executive coaching. And our niche happens to be digital agencies. So we specialize in digital agencies. I mean our processes and what we do, it's pretty industry agnostic. But we've just found that we really love working with digital agencies, we've been connected. That's how you and I were connected, which we'll talk about. And we love working with those teams. So one agency always leads to another. And so we often are swapping a lot of insight on owning an entrepreneurial business, much like a digital agency. So, that's my background. How about you? Tell me a little bit about you, Rob.
Rob:
I'm Rob Harr. I'm one of the co-founders of a web studio called Sparkbox, headquartered here in sunny Dayton, Ohio. We've been around for about 11 years. We now have right about 50 employees. We have two offices, one in Dayton, one in Pittsburgh, and a handful of, about two handfuls I guess, about 12 full-time remote people sprinkled throughout all of the other states. We're a web design and dev studio. My background is in computer science and enterprise software. And like I said about 11 years ago, we kind of started doing this, and it's kind of become a thing. Most of the time it's a lot of fun.
Traci:
Yeah. Highly, highly admired digital studio, I'll say, is Sparkbox.
Rob:
That's what I hear sometimes. I don't buy into the hype. Do you want to tell the story of how we met or do you want me to?
Traci:
We were just discussing this. As I don't have as good a memory as you do, but now it's all flooding back to me moment after moment that we met through the Bureau of Digital at Operations Camp in Asheville, North Carolina, which is one of my favorite towns in all the world. And Carl Smith, who we love, was so clever as to seat us next to each other.
Rob:
We became fast friends. I think we went through, and the things that we really connected on, was kind of our core beliefs about business and the humans that work in them. And that was one of the things that I remember distinctly having a lot of detailed conversations and figuring out pretty quick that we could spend all day just agreeing on things. And that was kind of fun, just to figure out where we both lined up on that.
Traci:
Yeah, it was great. I spoke on team dynamics and you were like, "Yes and yes. And what about this and what about that?" And realized that a lot of people maybe weren't thinking about things the way that we were thinking about. Not because they weren't as smart as us or anything like that, but maybe just because it's hard to stop and take a breath. Because oftentimes our companies can start to run us instead of us running them, and we can forget about team dynamics or we could forget about personal development, or where's the humanity in it all. Because we as business owners have a lot on our shoulders, a lot of responsibilities. We are navigating just so much.
And so we got to talking about what are the things that we forget, what are the things that are really important? How can we find joy in our work? How can we have a positive impact on the people that work with us, for us, our clients?
Rob:
Yeah. Since then, we've kind of stayed in touch and seen each other at a couple other events. And eventually, we decided that this could be a fun thing to collaborate on. It was one of those things. We were having so many great conversations about some topics that we deeply cared about, that maybe we were a little narcissistic in saying, "I wonder if other people would like to hear us talk about these topics." And that's one of the reasons we're here. And you're here, too, listeners.
Traci:
Also because we really hold these topics in such high esteem, I think we almost feel like we should be talking about it. There's so much going on in our world and there's so much going on in the business world that maybe we could just be a little diversion or break for people in their day to just remind them to think about these things. Maybe there'll be something new that they haven't heard about. Maybe it's something they've heard about, but they'll hear it in a different way.
Rob:
Yeah. And we like talking to each other. And this seemed to be a good excuse to do it more often.
Traci:
That's true.
Rob:
So, talk a little bit about kind of our core beliefs. So what we believe about humans and business. And just kind of give some context of why we do this and where we're going and why we care.
And I think that for me, I've been running this business for a little over 11 years now, and we started this business because we wanted to be able to take care of our families and do so in a way that gave us time. And I'm also an autonomy junkie and I really, really, really didn't want to work for anybody else, and I was tired of the, "Hey, I told you so," kind of reasons I was getting in the big enterprise. So, but what's morphed into for me is I very much want to explore that intersection between running a profitable, successful business and genuinely taking care of our people and treating them well. So the extension of just taking care of my family, but taking care of all of our employees’ family.
But there's an intersection point there, where I think that you can genuinely take care of people and run a profitable business. And that has become something that drives me to care about these topics really deeply because so much of my... The things that has been input from the outside about business is this whole meaning of, “It's not personal, it's just business.” And that phrase drives me bonkers, because it's always both. It can be personal, it's always personal for people. And I think that I'd want Sparkbox, and the things that I have influence over, to really, really well represent and be used as an example maybe someday in the big pie in the sky kind of idea of a successful business that took care of its people in an awesome way. And that you've proof that you can do both. They're not mutually exclusive ideas. That's a huge part of my why. What's yours?
Traci:
Kind of the intersection of a healthy team and a healthy business. That one can't really, truly be fulfilling and great without the other. Meaning that you can have a successful business if you're measuring it only by profitability. Maybe have a very dysfunctional team, dysfunctional leader, but you're not having a group of people who actually enjoying what they're doing, feeling like they have purpose, feeling like they belong to something. You can have a healthy team that really gets along well and are wanting to grow and develop, but if they don't know how to look at their business with the right set of eyes, they're not thinking about purpose, they're not thinking about vision, they're not thinking about accountability and goals, then it's really hard to have a profitable business.
So, it's so intertwined. These things are so intertwined. And my past experience, so I was in television for over 20 years, and most of that time at HGTV. So taking a company like that when it was just about 50 people and seeing it become a billion dollar media company was one of the most exciting journeys of my life. But what was really intriguing to me is this company maintaining its core values, a healthy, cohesive team, but also a thriving business. And that just became fascinating to me. And it's one of the reasons why I went back and got my master’s in professional psychology. I just couldn't get enough of really going deep and understanding this.
And it really came down to that humanity in business that you and I just love to talk about, in going deeper, and really understanding the levels of a healthy team and really understanding what are the tools that a company uses to get to being healthy and productive. What are the tools that they use to have a productive business model? And also really, when I really looked closely, who are the leaders? What makes these leaders different from other leaders that they're able to produce this type of company? And really looking closely at the leadership has been fascinating to me. It was fascinating to me in that model of HGTV, but it's also fascinating with me as I go into agencies and work with different agencies and see who the leaders are and how that is really telling for the type of business.
So heightening our self-awareness, becoming better leaders, it's all intertwined. It's, such a complex but really fun and amazing... I want to say it's complex, but it's also simple at the same time. And I think that's one of the things I think in our podcast that we continually keep trying to get after is what is the simplicity in this? What are just the key things that we need to know out of this big, complex topic that's just going to make us better leaders, better owners, better teammates, and a more successful, thriving business? What do we need to pull out of this? What are just the tidbits that we need to know? Because obviously, there's so much information coming at us, and we can't possibly know everything. What are the most important morsels we need to take out of this and apply and then move forward?
Rob:
Yeah, I love that. I mean one of the things that we've been saying since almost the beginning is one of our goals is to have happy healthy, well-adjusted humans and families. That's something I want an output of our company to be. And one of the things that I fundamentally believe is that if we want to have better companies and teams, one of the things we need all the individuals to do is work on becoming better humans.
Traci:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes.
Rob:
And those two things are linked and tied together in a way that we can't pull them apart. And I think that it's really, really easy to ignore and think about culture as this thing that's happening to us instead of this thing that we're a part of and directing. And there's a collective intelligence to it, if we believe the same things and have the same mission, vision, values, and all those other pieces.
Traci:
Yeah. I mean, how do we create a place of work where the employees come in and they look around and instead of saying, "What can this company do for me?" They say, "What can I do for this company?" How can we shift that mindset so that we all feel part of something? And to your point, we understand that our own individual growth is going to affect the collective results of this team.
Rob:
Yeah. Oh, this is going to be so much fun. I'm so excited to get into all these things.
Traci:
Me, too.
Rob:
So, okay. So this is the opening. We wanted to introduce ourselves, talk about why we do this, give a little bit of background. Check, check, check, check. So, I think that the way we ought to end this first episode or episode zero, or whatever we're going to call it, is talk about where we're going.
So what are we going to do in this first season? Do you want to run through these lists of topics?
Traci:
Sure. So we are going to be talking about things like blind spots and superpowers. That's one of my favorite topics. Healthy communication. How can we communicate at work so that we are actually being more human and more connected to each other? Core values. We're going to talk about how they are an amazing tool to build culture. We're going to talk about life vision, which is so important for owners to have their own purpose and vision for themselves and how they can apply that to their business and to their life. How to deal with growth, which I know is a struggle. Should we grow? Should we not grow? How do we answer that question?
We're going to talk about owner exhaustion, to just feel overwhelmed and exhausted and alone. And we want to normalize the fact that you're not alone. And the list goes on. I probably can't even touch on everything, but we have so many ideas about things we want to talk about.
Rob:
Yeah, and our plan right now is after we get through those, we'd love to get some questions from anybody who decides to listen. So, my mom, your mom, or maybe our business partners and our spouses, right? Unfortunately for us, because that's the same for you, your business partner and your spouse, we're going to lose a listener, for our count.
Traci:
Exactly, sorry.
Rob:
But what we'd like to do is, if there is any questions or if there is any further thoughts from us at the end of that, if we get through this first season of topics, is do a wrap-up episode and answer some of those questions and talk about anything after we hear the conversation to then go back and be able to add context, if there is questions or comments, or even things that we noticed that we wish we would have said in any of that.
So I don't know about but you, Traci, but I am so excited to get started and share these things with everybody. And I appreciate everybody coming along for this ride with us.
Traci:
Yes. Me, too.
Rob:
So, stay tuned. The next one of these will be one of these topics, and we'll roll from there.
Traci:
Sounds good.
Rob:
All right, thanks.
Traci:
Thanks.
Announcer:
Thanks for listening to the Overly Human podcast. We know you have a lot of choices, and we're grateful you chose us. If you like what you've heard, please subscribe and tell your friends to listen as well. The Overly Human podcast is brought to you by Navigate the Journey and Sparkbox. For more information on this podcast, or to get in touch with Traci or Rob, go to overlyhuman.com. Thanks for listening.
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