Artwork for podcast Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking
What’s a Good Use for AI?: Interview with Stephen Ladek
Episode 39 • 25th April 2023 • Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking • Kirsten Rourke
00:00:00 00:20:54

Share Episode

Shownotes

In this week's episode of Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking, Kirsten talks with Stephen Ladek about the human experience and artificial intelligence, redefining success, and his awesome rock & roll band.

Our favorite moments::

  • (01:11) connections between performance and entrepreneurship 
  • (02:10) Ladek, Stephen’s rock & roll band
  • (05:11) AI in the L&D space
  • (07:14) the differentiator of the future
  • (08:10) a proposal for using AI
  • (10:00) artisanal experience
  • (15:12) learning from failure model
  • (19:27) Stephen’s advice for ongoing mastery

If you enjoyed this conversation about AI and performance, check out Season 3, Episode 32: Can AI Replace the Human Voice?: Interview with Liz Solar

Rourke Training’s webpage: https://www.rourketraining.com/

Ongoing Masgtery: Presenting & Speaking page: https://ongoing-mastery.captivate.fm/

RSS feed: https://feeds.captivate.fm/ongoing-mastery/

Read a transcript of this episode:  

For the video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/4nezkuHxVN8

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstenrourke/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kirstenmalenarourke

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kirstenrourke?lang=en

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rourketraining/

Looking for a kick-ass speaking group? Use our affiliate link to join Innovation Women: https://bit.ly/innovationwomen

Transcripts

Kirsten:

Hi.

Kirsten:

This week I talk with Steven Ladek about the human experience and artificial

Kirsten:

intelligence redefining what success means and his rock and roll band.

Kirsten:

Let's jump into it.

Kirsten:

Hello everybody.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

Presenting & Speaking the podcast and the adapt in

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

the moment presentation skills because as you can see, we are in Zoom today

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

instead of our normal riverside because everything you flow with what happens and

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

speaking of flowing with what happens, we have an expert in that in Stephen Ladek.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

So Stephen, you have been in performance for a long time and all sorts of things.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

Can you tell everybody a little bit about.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

. Stephen: Sure.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

So I have, I'm, I'm a fairly classic entrepreneur, and so that is a term

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

that gets thrown around, I feel like fairly nonchalantly these days.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

Yep.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

Unless you don't want to be one and then you don't care

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

and you never hear about it.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

But anybody who's in the startup universe or mm-hmm.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

, you know, the me generation, the digital nomad universe, like,

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

hey, I've, I've got my startup.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

I've been, you know, I've been a remote worker for 17 years before, you know,

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

anybody knew what remote working was.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

I have started and run co-founded or founded four businesses that.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

It from, at this stage, I've been making it up and figuring

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

it out for quite some time.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

When it comes to performance, there's a couple different aspects.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

One, you can't build a product or a service without selling it, and so usually

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

my role in the products and services that I've been a part of is a front.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

Facing roles.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

So it's working with clients, it's working in a sales or a marketing facing role.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

Mm-hmm.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

. And that has led me to a place where something that I do most often now is

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

what you're doing right now, hosting a podcast, being on a stage at a

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

conference, running a virtual summit.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

Being that person who is either guiding the, the conversation, who is instigating

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

the conversation or connecting others.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

But my own, you know, little personal hobby that I like to put out there as.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

every, so something that we could talk about as a peripheral, you know, I'm not

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

sure how relevant is this conversation, is that I've had the privilege of living

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

outside the United States for 17 years.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

I'm originally from Colorado, the United States.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

Mm-hmm.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

. So we've lived in five different countries.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

That's based upon my wife, my wife's work.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

But I've had a rock and roll band in each of those countries.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

Oh.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

And so, Oh, we have to talk about that.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

So had we have to talk about, I had a rock and roll band in Costa Rica.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

I've had a rock and roll band in Bangkok, Thailand, and now I live here

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

in the city of Mexico City, Mexico.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

And I gotta be honest with you, I have the best rock and

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

roll band that I've ever, okay.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

And they are.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

They are, well, they're four Mexicans.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

It's, it's Gonzalo, Johnny, Eddie, and Fabian.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

And, you know, okay.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

I, I literally, when we moved here two and a half years ago, I put

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

this band together very purposely.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

Right.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

They are, you know, I, I, this was during the pandemic.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

We moved here in October of 2020.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

And, is that right?

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

Yeah, that's correct.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

And I said, look, you know, this is one of the things I've done

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

and these other, my wife loves it.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

It's something that we love to do.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

And so what I did was I took out a Facebook.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

And I said, this is the first time I've ever done it this way.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

I said, look, if you're interested in being in a rock and roll

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

band, I wanna put it together.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

I had the add up for three days.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

I got more than a hundred applications, and then I went through the process over a

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

month of auditioning first guitar players.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

I whittled it down to about six.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

I found the man who is now, my, my guitar player's name is Gonzalo.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

We call him Scrappy.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

He can play anything.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

He's the best guitar player in Mexico.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

Excellent.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

And then, like a long story short, you know, through him, we ended

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

up connecting with bass players and keyboard players and whatnot.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

And now we have this group and we, you know, started out slow

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

like anybody else, but now we do a gig every, every month or so.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

And it's, you know, oh, I gotta be honest with you, it's,

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

it's the best party in town.

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

So

Kirsten:

your band is named,

Stephen:

It's named Ladek.

Stephen:

Okay, . There we go.

Stephen:

Because I'm

Kirsten:

like, I'm like, and you know, just to be clear, the band name is Ladek.

Kirsten:

There we go.

Stephen:

Perfect.

Stephen:

So yeah, so I mean, you know, at Ladek Rock Band, if you wanna

Stephen:

check it out at Ladek Rock Band.

Stephen:

There you

Kirsten:

go.

Kirsten:

Fantastic.

Kirsten:

And you are also the face and voice of a really popular podcast.

Kirsten:

Can you

Stephen:

talk about that?

Stephen:

Yeah, sure.

Stephen:

So a podcast that I run for a company called Open LMS, which is the company I

Stephen:

work for, is called the eLearn Podcast.

Stephen:

And we've, you know, at this stage right now, we've put, I

Stephen:

think as of this conversation about 120 episodes on the street.

Stephen:

And that's everything.

Stephen:

You know, essentially the focus of the podcast is how do you do online learning?

Stephen:

Right.

Stephen:

And so if you're going to do online learning better, that means you have

Stephen:

to look at all aspects of it, and that's how do you design learning,

Stephen:

how do you deliver learning?

Stephen:

How do you analyze and understand the outcomes of learning?

Stephen:

And then, you know, we kinda have this fourth bucket that we talk about, which

Stephen:

is essentially what are the gadgets, the processes, you know, the shiny

Stephen:

objects that everybody's interested in.

Stephen:

Obviously today, the biggest one is AI and ChatGPT, and.

Stephen:

But it's everything from learning platforms to, you know, chat bots, to

Stephen:

micro-learning platforms, et cetera.

Stephen:

And so those are a lot, you know, a ton of great conversations and it's really

Stephen:

about bringing out those experts and learning about who's doing what and

Stephen:

who's successful, what are the challenges and how are they overcoming them.

Kirsten:

Awesome.

Kirsten:

Yeah, AI's definitely taking a foothold in the l and d space and

Kirsten:

the learning and development space.

Kirsten:

For those who aren't part of it, I, I wanna actually run this by

Kirsten:

you and see what your take is.

Kirsten:

I was at DevLearn, so one of the industry conferences, and I was on

Kirsten:

the floor and there was this very, very nice guy who was showing off his

Kirsten:

product and going, this is amazing.

Kirsten:

And it was video that was a picture of the person, and then

Kirsten:

they morphed the mouth to talk.

Kirsten:

So they said, see, we can have you be an instructor without you being there.

Kirsten:

And I was horrified down to my bones by the concept.

Kirsten:

Yeah, sure.

Kirsten:

But I understand that that's because I'm a trainer.

Kirsten:

. And so for me, I'm looking at it going, ah, but what do you think?

Kirsten:

Is it something that bothers you?

Kirsten:

Is it something you think is interesting?

Stephen:

I find AI fascinating.

Stephen:

I think it's inevitable.

Stephen:

I think we've been using it for, you know, many, many years now.

Stephen:

In other forms, I mean, every chatbot is a form of AI.

Stephen:

Every, you know, machine learning has been in the background.

Stephen:

And what we're seeing right now is generative AI.

Stephen:

And so generative AI means that we're using these processes

Stephen:

to actually create original.

Stephen:

Why I put that on the stage is because I think, again, there's an inevitability

Stephen:

to what we're gonna see in the future.

Stephen:

We're already seeing classrooms disrupted.

Stephen:

We're already seeing MBAs being passed and you know, law exams being

Stephen:

passed by these devices and whatnot.

Stephen:

I have a 14 year old son last night, literally, this is literally last night.

Stephen:

He comes to the dinner, he's like, he's like, it's everywhere.

Stephen:

He's like, he opens up Spotify.

Stephen:

He's like, did you know Spotify has an an AI DJ?

Stephen:

He's like, you, you know, you can literally go there.

Stephen:

He's like, DJs are now gonna be obsolete because they can literally,

Stephen:

it's literally a talks to you.

Stephen:

Here's the DJ telling you what songs are coming up next.

Stephen:

So I recently, but what I think is, is I think that this offers us a very

Stephen:

interesting opportunity, and this is just me going back and being a super geek to.

Stephen:

to live the ethos of Star Trek, right, and at the, at the end of the day.

Stephen:

Our humanness is what's going to be the experience.

Stephen:

It's what's gonna be the differentiator of the future, right?

Stephen:

Yes.

Stephen:

So the thing I put out at every dinner table now, or I have been for the last

Stephen:

four or five months, is there's this great movie called Good Will Hunting,

Stephen:

which I hope you're familiar with.

Stephen:

Yes.

Stephen:

I'm surprised at how many people are not familiar with it.

Stephen:

That shows my age.

Stephen:

Hmm.

Stephen:

But, um, you know, there's this great scene.

Stephen:

Robin Williams and Matt Damon are, they're at a pond and they're sitting down.

Stephen:

This is kind of a climactic moment in the movie, and

Stephen:

essentially Matt Damon is ChatGPT.

Stephen:

He is AI.

Stephen:

He knows everything, right?

Stephen:

He's a genius.

Stephen:

He can read a book and remember.

Stephen:

Yeah, he's got a photographic memory.

Stephen:

He can come and give you all of the answers.

Stephen:

But what Robin William calls out is he says, look, you've

Stephen:

never actually done any.

Stephen:

Right.

Stephen:

You've never had the experience, you've never seen the Sistine Chapel.

Stephen:

You've never been in a war, you've never, you know, fallen

Stephen:

in love and been vulnerable.

Stephen:

And so it's great that you've got all this knowledge, but you're still, you

Stephen:

haven't put the humanness behind it.

Stephen:

And so what I think about AI and learning what I think about AI and business

Stephen:

and AI, and, you know, everything is.

Stephen:

Let's use it to create efficiencies.

Stephen:

Let's use it to get rid of some of the processes that we maybe don't need to

Stephen:

have somebody sitting there clicking a button for anymore, and let's find out.

Stephen:

Let's find the way to.

Stephen:

Grow the muscle of being more human with one another.

Stephen:

Mm-hmm.

Stephen:

, let's use this as an opportunity to have deeper, richer

Stephen:

experiences with one another.

Stephen:

Let's figure out a way to use those efficiencies to actually have real

Stephen:

conversations with one another.

Stephen:

Okay.

Stephen:

So I, that's what I

Kirsten:

feel.

Kirsten:

That is such a good answer, because I know that my instinct of reaction

Kirsten:

is to just go right into, you know, no, I think that's a bad idea.

Kirsten:

, you know?

Kirsten:

No.

Kirsten:

And I'm like, okay, I'm being limited.

Kirsten:

How can this, you know, because one of the problems I have is when I was

Kirsten:

still in e-learning full-time, I would bring in voiceover artists mm-hmm.

Kirsten:

to do the work.

Kirsten:

And now there's, you know, WellSaid, which is really good.

Kirsten:

That's doing most of the voiceover.

Kirsten:

And it's just a computer program.

Kirsten:

And the problem is, is that I want.

Kirsten:

I want somebody who's actually gonna perform the material, not

Kirsten:

just have it read in a nice voice.

Kirsten:

And so I guess what bothers me is there's so many people who really can't

Kirsten:

tell the difference, and I'm really hoping that one of the things that can

Kirsten:

come out of this revolution that we're seeing is an education of what it looks

Kirsten:

like when a performer is involved.

Kirsten:

Mm-hmm.

Kirsten:

. Mm-hmm.

Kirsten:

. Sure.

Kirsten:

Like the difference, the humanness that you're talking about is

Kirsten:

the connection point of what is it that a human can bring to.

Kirsten:

They can bring their transformation ability with their emotions and their

Kirsten:

voice and their face and all of it.

Kirsten:

Sorry.

Kirsten:

So

Stephen:

I offer you the hope of the future in what we could call

Stephen:

the artisanal culinary community.

Stephen:

Okay?

Stephen:

Right.

Stephen:

I mean, Fast food is everywhere.

Stephen:

You know, corporate food is everywhere.

Stephen:

You know, our ability to go and literally, you know, I can pick up this device right

Stephen:

here in the, in the country I live in.

Stephen:

I can have anything delivered to my apartment in the next hour.

Stephen:

Mm-hmm.

Stephen:

, literally anything.

Stephen:

Right?

Stephen:

I Thai food to, you know, tacos to, you know, eggs.

Stephen:

Yep.

Stephen:

And yet, what do we crave?

Stephen:

That artisanal experience where some, a chef is actually going to come and

Stephen:

curate and hand created, you know, the person who's, you know, found that

Stephen:

interesting twist of lemons with spice that you didn't think was PU right.

Stephen:

So at the end of the day, we see, I think we see this pattern repeat itself over

Stephen:

and over again in history and that, you know, here's a new disruptive technology.

Stephen:

It's going to change things for sure, but alter.

Stephen:

This is what we crave as humans, right?

Stephen:

We create those experiences.

Stephen:

And so for you, you know, and then wanting that performer, I think it's absolutely

Stephen:

a, a fantastic thing to want and be able to articulate it in a way that's going

Stephen:

to make sense to people, because you're gonna have to pay premium for it, right?

Stephen:

Yeah.

Stephen:

It's going to be, it's the reason why Masterclass.

Stephen:

You know, has been successful because rather than Coursera or Udemy or whatever,

Stephen:

where you can buy a course for $10, no, no, you gotta get a subscription

Stephen:

where it's hundreds of dollars, right?

Stephen:

Mm-hmm.

Stephen:

, because the quality's different because it's curated, because the

Stephen:

performers are incredible because the personalities, they bring in it, right?

Stephen:

And so, I don't, there's a lot that's going to be changed for sure.

Stephen:

There's gonna be jobs that are lost.

Stephen:

There's going to be people who are gonna be faced with having to

Stephen:

reinvent themselves in a big way.

Stephen:

But I think that that's been happening for several hundred years now.

Stephen:

Several thousand years for the human person, for the human society.

Stephen:

So it's just.

Stephen:

Darn fast.

Stephen:

And yeah, we, it, and this isn't a political, you know, we don't need to

Stephen:

go down the economic, political aspects of that right now, , but there's that.

Stephen:

That's where the humanness comes in, right?

Stephen:

That is the most important part of the conversation.

Stephen:

How do we create those safety nets and those ways to lift

Stephen:

people up from time to change?

Kirsten:

Awesome.

Kirsten:

So one of the things I wanna make sure I ask you is how does ongoing mastery

Kirsten:

show up in your life, in your work?

Kirsten:

Obviously you would have some aspect of that in Ladek the band.

Kirsten:

Mm-hmm.

Kirsten:

. Um, so what, what are some things that, how are you moving yourself forward?

Stephen:

So ongoing mastery shows up in my life in a couple of different ways,

Stephen:

and I, it's, it's an interesting time to actually ask this question because I've

Stephen:

now arrived at a time in life where, I actually no longer feel like the young guy

Stephen:

in the room where I'm figuring things out.

Stephen:

There's aspects of that for sure, but I do actually enter into meetings

Stephen:

these days in the business that I work for, or I'm like, Hmm, I've

Stephen:

actually been here a few times before.

Stephen:

You know, or, you know, this, I, I've foreseen.

Stephen:

I can foresee how this will play out simply because I've

Stephen:

had these conversations before.

Stephen:

So experience in ongoing, you know, experience is a huge.

Stephen:

Piece of the recipe, a key, not only key and green, but a huge, like, I wanna

Stephen:

say, a voluminous rep, you know, um, portion of the recipe of mastery for sure.

Stephen:

This is where we get the 10,000, you know, repetitions or, you know, building

Stephen:

habits or any of these things, right?

Stephen:

So how does it show up?

Stephen:

It's showing up in my life in ways where it's like, wow, these are things that

Stephen:

I've done over and over again, and I feel.

Stephen:

Incredibly comfortable doing them because I've been doing them for so long.

Stephen:

Podcasting, for example, I understand the technology, booking the guests,

Stephen:

you know the the process to make sure that they show up, and then how do you

Stephen:

then the post-production process and then the publishing and the syndication

Stephen:

and the marketing, all of that I've been doing for so long now that.

Stephen:

I have a team.

Stephen:

Mm-hmm.

Stephen:

, I know how to explain it to you.

Stephen:

You, you and I, we could create probably a, create a class on how

Stephen:

to start and publish a podcast right now extemporaneously, just

Stephen:

because I'm so comfortable with it.

Stephen:

Right.

Stephen:

Awesome.

Stephen:

And then, you know, the, the beyond experience though is that muscle of using

Stephen:

that experience to then actually create efficiencies and create effectiveness.

Stephen:

Mm-hmm.

Stephen:

, so what did I do in the past?

Stephen:

What, you know, I got to a certain level or I, I had certain

Stephen:

things that were successful.

Stephen:

do I wanna push?

Stephen:

And, you know, okay, like what can I do differently?

Stephen:

You know, because you're, you're always looking back and saying,

Stephen:

what can I do differently?

Stephen:

How can I continue to grow?

Stephen:

How can I experience newness?

Stephen:

How can I experience that?

Stephen:

You know, put myself in those places of uncomfortability to

Stephen:

continue to refine my practice.

Stephen:

And those are things.

Stephen:

Let's take it back to the podcast example of.

Stephen:

You know, how can I improve the, the introduction, you

Stephen:

know, how can, can I use it?

Stephen:

Could I use the music in a different way?

Stephen:

You know, could I look, can I punch above my weight maybe and ask for some,

Stephen:

you know, look, look for those guests that maybe I think are outside my reach.

Stephen:

Those types of things are ways that I think that you continue to

Stephen:

make that capital m and mastery.

Kirsten:

Awesome.

Kirsten:

So I guess one more question for you would be, especially because your background

Kirsten:

in eLearning and in the learning and development space, not everyone is

Kirsten:

comfortable setting up a learning from failure model, but we learn a lot more

Kirsten:

from failure than we do from success.

Kirsten:

So how do you think we should help people see the value in the fact

Kirsten:

that failure is not a sin, it's not a crime, it's not a problem.

Kirsten:

It's actually part of the evolution of people.

Stephen:

It's part of our process.

Stephen:

Hundred percent do.

Stephen:

I guess maybe the one way to approach that is to understand or maybe offer the

Stephen:

hypothesis that we don't have successes.

Stephen:

We only have things that don't fail.

Stephen:

Right?

Stephen:

Hmm.

Stephen:

So I like that.

Stephen:

And so well, and so if you think about it, ultimately, let's just remove

Stephen:

the word success for a second and.

Stephen:

Talk about the word outcome.

Stephen:

Mm-hmm.

Stephen:

, you know, ultimately what we're trying to do when we say we want to be successful is

Stephen:

that we're trying to achieve an outcome.

Stephen:

And when we're unable to get to that outcome, we call it failure, right?

Stephen:

Because, oh, and let's just take a typical sales process, right?

Stephen:

Like, oh, I created this service and then I went out and I did

Stephen:

something, and then nobody bought it.

Stephen:

So there's a, we would call it a failure.

Stephen:

I didn't get the outcome.

Stephen:

Okay?

Stephen:

So I changed the marketing a little bit and oh, maybe I had a little

Stephen:

bit of people buy it and, and so there's a little, you know, but I

Stephen:

didn't get that big outcome, right?

Stephen:

And so ultimately, we're always working towards an outcome,

Stephen:

and I'm a huge, huge believer.

Stephen:

Being very clear about what you're trying to achieve because you, I don't think that

Stephen:

you can actually arrive at any place that you can't clearly define for yourself.

Stephen:

You know, it's very super, I, you know, I didn't invent that.

Stephen:

It's been around forever, but when we're thinking about success and

Stephen:

failure, it's like, okay, let's not talk about being successful.

Stephen:

Let's talk about what does that look like?

Stephen:

What is the outcome that we wanna be?

Stephen:

Is it, so do I want to start a company and have, uh, you know, a hundred thousand

Stephen:

employees and, you know, be a billionaire?

Stephen:

Is that success?

Stephen:

, you know, Hey, really, actually what I want is I want to, I wanna just, I wanna

Stephen:

work with 10 buddies who I really love.

Stephen:

And you know, we, we make a couple of million dollars a year so that everybody

Stephen:

has a nice salary and we all kind of have really great life work balance.

Stephen:

Like, what's that outcome?

Stephen:

Mm-hmm.

Stephen:

. And that way as you iterate over time, you're not really thinking,

Stephen:

Ugh, I'm not, you know, I'm failing.

Stephen:

It's like, hmm, I didn't get to that outcome.

Stephen:

So what do I need to change in order to.

Kirsten:

I like that and that, I'm just imagining the pull

Kirsten:

quotes from this right now.

Kirsten:

. I love it.

Kirsten:

. Stephen: I'm like, I can

Kirsten:

This was not planned.

Kirsten:

I'm sorry.

Kirsten:

This is not planned.

Kirsten:

This is just stuff I think about all the time.

Kirsten:

Oh, very cool.

Kirsten:

Again, gray hair, gray hair.

Kirsten:

Hey,

Kirsten:

I'm, I would have it if it weren't for the lovely thing of dyeing.

Kirsten:

I am a big fan of dyeing.

Kirsten:

So where should people that wanna know more about you, where would they find.

Kirsten:

So

Stephen:

the best place to find me is this is ladek.com.

Stephen:

Okay.

Stephen:

So that's, that's a website where you can, you know, as a, as a side project, as a,

Stephen:

you know, something that I'd love to do.

Stephen:

I love to help people build these muscles.

Stephen:

And so one piece that I was remiss I did not mention is, you know, one

Stephen:

of the ways that I have seen mastery is by building foundations that'll,

Stephen:

that give you the support and give you the ultimately, Platform that you

Stephen:

need in order to reach for that net outcome or take that risk or stretch

Stephen:

or build that muscle in some other way.

Stephen:

Mm-hmm.

Stephen:

, right?

Stephen:

And so if somebody wanted to find me, you know, ThisIsLadek, and, and that's on all

Stephen:

social media, on LinkedIn, on, you know, like, like I said, a website as well.

Stephen:

And what you'll find is, you know, I have something that I call a three pillar

Stephen:

program, and that program really looks.

Stephen:

, I think holistically.

Stephen:

Mm-hmm.

Stephen:

, what I say is like you can live fit, which is physical and mental health.

Stephen:

You can live fulfilled, which is around spirituality and relationships and

Stephen:

purpose and those kinds of things.

Stephen:

And you can live free.

Stephen:

And that's how, you know, how are you building the foundations

Stephen:

around finance and quality of life and those kinds of things.

Stephen:

So looking at mastery through the perspective of what foundations

Stephen:

can I build so that I feel.

Stephen:

Completely safe in taking a risk.

Stephen:

Mm.

Stephen:

That is the, that's the, the challenge or the enticement that I offered to

Stephen:

those people who are listening right now.

Stephen:

Nice.

Kirsten:

Nice.

Kirsten:

And actually I think that might be so, so if you were gonna give advice mm-hmm.

Kirsten:

to people, the one thing that they should consider in supporting their

Kirsten:

mastery, would it be, look at your found.

Kirsten:

, Stephen: that's where, you know,

Kirsten:

know, when we're looking at saying like, I want to master something.

Kirsten:

Mm-hmm.

Kirsten:

, usually that means I'm gonna have to put a lot of time and effort.

Kirsten:

You know, again, I would start from the place of what is I

Kirsten:

wanna, what is the outcome?

Kirsten:

What does mastery actually mean to me?

Kirsten:

Is that I'm playing a musical instrument like, you know, um,

Kirsten:

like a concert pianist or is.

Kirsten:

, you know what?

Kirsten:

I have a really great life balance right now.

Kirsten:

Work life balance.

Kirsten:

And that's that, that's mastery of life to me right now.

Kirsten:

Like, so getting really, really clear about what you want that outcome to be.

Kirsten:

Mm-hmm.

Kirsten:

. And then ask yourself, what is it that I need to have in place in order to

Kirsten:

be able, you know, definitively say to myself, now, you know, I've in,

Kirsten:

I've achieved that, and I'm able to take those risks now to continue to

Kirsten:

grow and to continue to move forward.

Kirsten:

So that is the one place I would point people.

Kirsten:

Understand and be, be able to clearly articulate that outcome

Kirsten:

of mastery that you want to have.

Kirsten:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

And then give yourself, you know, put in place those things

Kirsten:

that are gonna support you.

Kirsten:

Is it, you know, do you need a little bit more finance so you, maybe you

Kirsten:

can go, go learn, go, go get a new degree, go get a new skill, you know?

Kirsten:

And what do I do?

Kirsten:

You need to put, you know, Work into your relationship so that you have this

Kirsten:

really solid support network with friends, with your partner, with whomever it is,

Kirsten:

so that no matter what, you know, that you got people you can turn to that

Kirsten:

they're gonna say, Hey, you can do it.

Kirsten:

You know, is there something about your health, your mental, whatever, that,

Kirsten:

you know, you need to either level up your game or change so that you know

Kirsten:

you're gonna wake up every day with energy and with, you know, the ability

Kirsten:

to get out there and get it and look at, you know, move forward in that outcome.

Kirsten:

So that's how I, I'm, I know it's kind of a longer answer, but that's how I

Kirsten:

would tie all of those things together to say that's the one thing I would.

Kirsten:

. Kirsten: Awesome.

Kirsten:

Well, thank you.

Kirsten:

I really appreciate it, and I look forward to not only listening to your podcast, but

Kirsten:

seeing, I'm gonna track down your band, and, uh, I, I'm hoping you're on YouTube.

Stephen:

Oh, Instagram, so I You're on Instagram.

Stephen:

Okay.

Stephen:

I'll find you on Instagram at Ladek Rock Band on Instagram and you

Stephen:

can see some clips there for sure.

Stephen:

Okay,

Kirsten:

Fantastic.

Kirsten:

Alright, so I'm gonna go ahead and wrap this up and say everybody for

Ongoing Mastery:

Presenting & Speaking, thank you for watching and listening

Ongoing Mastery:

and we'll see you next time.

Ongoing Mastery:

If you enjoyed this conversation about AI and performance, check out

Ongoing Mastery:

season three, episode number 32.

Ongoing Mastery:

It's my interview with Liz Solar called "Can AI Replace the Human Voice?"

Links