Product & Brand Marketing into Music & Executive leadership Coaching | Stephen Kohler [35] - Transferable Skills

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Transferable skills, skills, skills from Cackle Media.
This is transferable skills. I'm Noah Michigan.
Today's guest is Steven Kohler who shares his skills journey
from product and brand marketinginto music and executive
leadership coaching. His book that he wrote is all
about coaching and he uses the lens and filter of music, music

(00:20):
theory and concepts from music. Very interesting story, so stick
around. I hope you enjoy Steven Kohler.
It's great to have you on the show.
Noah, thank you so much. It's an absolute pleasure.
I can't way to to rock out together as it were.
For those who are tuning in on YouTube or on Spotify mobile,
you could probably see that bothof us share similar backgrounds.

(00:42):
And I mean that visually. You got guitars hanging on the
background. I got guitars.
Early on in your career, how didyou explore your interests and
figure out what you wanted to get started with in your career?
Thank you, Nolan. Again.
It's such an honor and pleasure to be here with you.
And huge thanks to our mutual friend Chris for connecting us.
I think that the executive summary, the through line of my

(01:02):
journey thus far has all been about music.
Grew up in a musical family, exited high school, knew that I
wanted to do something musical in college.
Although I ended up having on paper a philosophy degree major,
I was spending all my non philosophy classes in the music
building. Graduated there.
I had wanted to be a full time musician in to pay the bills.

(01:24):
I stumbled into what turned out to be a fabulous long business
career not expected at all. Got to work for an amazing
company called Sure. Those listeners and viewers that
are familiar with that with music will know that brand.
And for those of you who don't, pretty much every stage in the
world has a sure microphone on it.
I unexpectedly got a great background and, and

(01:45):
understanding in business and just exposure to so many things
that I would not have expected. And after a long career in
business, I really got passionate actually about the
human side of things. And about six years ago
scratched another itch and was able to start my own business,
which is something I'd always want to do.
I became a what's known as an executive leadership coach and

(02:05):
we use music as a lens to develop people.
And then shortly after we kickedthat off, my wife get me over
the head and said, hey, what aresome other ways we can build
your passion for music into thisthing?
So I started thinking about how we could do workshops to help
leaders become better at what they do using music.
And I also decided to write a book.
And it's been an absolute pleasure to share a lot of

(02:27):
things I've learned about music and leadership with those that
could benefit. I'm also singer-songwriter.
You can look me up on Spotify. And so I would say all of that
has been a huge gift. And the through line is
definitely music. The I have, I've got the book
right here for those who are tuning in and the link will be
in the show notes. Obviously, I know this strong
urge that you cannot ignore of being a musician, wanting to

(02:50):
have it as a very big part of your life and then wrestling
with, OK, now how do I do that responsibly?
Or what's a reasonable expectation for me to take this
into a sustainable career, something that will pay the
bills but also still bring me joy and struggling with that.
And then you get into business unexpectedly.
The perception would might be that it they are complete

(03:11):
opposites. How did you wrestle the demons?
This need to be a musician and to have music as part of your
life while still figuring out what your career might look
like. Yeah, that's a great question.
In in keeping with the theme of or one of the themes of this
podcast. I think, although I did not know
it at the time, Noah, one of my unknown gifts was this spirit of

(03:32):
curiosity. And at the time when I was
starting my professional career out of college, I was really
interested in learning things that were beyond music.
So I would say curiosity was a big strength of mine that I'm
not even sure I appreciated. And I would argue it can be a
huge transferable skill for anybody in their life journey.

(03:53):
Yeah, I curiosity. Sometimes I see this in my kids,
sometimes I see it myself. Curiosity leads you down rabbit
holes sometimes on YouTube and but the fundamental underlying
foundation of curiosity is this need to understand or to learn
more about something. And we're living in the golden
era of exploration now. The ability to satisfy your

(04:17):
curiosity and explore it to get enough information at at the tip
of our fingers. At any moment I can learn about
anything. Oh yeah, 100%.
Interestingly, and this is a leadership lesson too that I
learned, first of all, it was about relationships.
That was my first lesson, and this is highly transferable
about the power of networking and connection relationships.
It's not necessarily how smart you are or how talented you are.

(04:40):
And so the short answer is, I was very blessed to be able to
get at least my resume in the Dora chore through a set of
mutual relationships. They looked at my resume.
I did not have a business background.
I did not have an engineering background.
I didn't even technically have amusic major.
But what I did have was a resumethat spoke flexibility and
hopefully a guy that can learn quickly.

(05:02):
And why did I say that? Because I saw my resume and say,
oh, you'd probably be good in marketing now.
I'd never taken a marketing class in my life.
But why do you say that they thought that then?
In hindsight I can see there area lot of this is generalization,
but a lot of marketers, if they don't have a marketing degree,
often have some kind of liberal arts degree.
Not always, but in at least whenI was coming out of school, that

(05:23):
was quite common. So the gentleman who later dear
friend Sandy Schroeder, who hired me, he looked at my resume
and said, I, I'm going to take abig risk on you kid.
And he did. And it turned out to be a
fabulous marriage, so to speak. So that to answer your question,
I started is what's called a product coordinator, which was
a, for those of us that know marketing and product
development. It's a function called product

(05:43):
management, which is the part ofmarketing really involved with
new product development and it really sparked it a long career
and creating products in the music industry.
In my case, I worked on a lot ofwireless microphones, which was
a dream job. So I did that for a number of
years before going off and getting my MBA.
My dream would be to find a job that I can play with the things

(06:05):
that I do in my off time personally.
And that's like what you're described as exactly that I
could spend hours even just likethis sound might sound boring to
many people out there. Arguably most people out there
looking at wires like cables, different types of cable,
cables, TSTRSTRRS like those things like like.
There's a big. Difference between XL RI can

(06:27):
name a whole bunch of other ones.
Quarter inch 3.5mm the cables asprobably the most benign boring
piece of audio equipment and gear, but how important they are
with some when something is not working, how frustrating it is.
And to understand the differencebetween some of those cables is
important in order to know its functionality and use.

(06:49):
So just playing with these things is actually fun for me.
Forget about getting into the next level of wireless
microphones and audio gear and real gear like tech gear when it
comes to music or presentation. And you, like we started this
conversation off you, you talking about shore microphones
being synonymous with virtually every live performance event,

(07:12):
whether it's a concert or a keynote speech at a huge
conference, they're virtually everywhere and sure is
synonymous with top quality. You're working at a company that
is synonymous with top quality and reliability and you get to
tinker. That's part of your job.
And that's super fun. And what a great privilege and

(07:33):
opportunity. Did it also feel like work?
At times certainly, but most of the tenure, frankly, no.
It was like working in a candy store.
You get to work with some of thegreatest people that I've ever
gotten to know professionally. I learned so many powerful
business lessons about as you said, quality taking care of
customers. I was able to leverage a lot of
those learnings later when I started my own firm, just such a

(07:55):
privilege. It was really great and and how
ultimately again transferable about making an impact in the
world, putting great in this case we're talking about sure.
They really had a mission about helping musicians and those in
the audio world communicate and create powerful performances and
they have products that would last for generations.
And those are powerful lessons that I think all of us can learn

(08:18):
as leaders out there. Yeah, with some of your
leadership learning and philosophy and style learned at
that company. 100%, yeah. So much of my early leadership
was informed there. One of the things I talk about
my book, and for those of us that have experience working in
teams or leading teams, I talk about it is, is how to lead when
you have no formal authority or formal title.

(08:40):
And sure, give me the opportunity early on.
It is to be responsible for leading people even though they
didn't report to me. And that was a tremendous
transferable skill that I yeah, 100,000 lessons that I learned
at Shore. We'll come back to shore.
We'll talk a little bit about what it's like to be in charge
of a brand and product when you're not from an engineering
and technical background. And I'm curious the skills

(09:01):
needed and the learnings in order to get up to speed in
order to be able to effectively lead a brand in that way.
But before then, since we're going to interject throughout
the conversation about lessons from your book, it's a good
opportunity to just talk about the book quickly.
The book titles called the Leadership Anthem, how listening
like a musician creates strong performances.

(09:21):
Tell us what was the genesis of this book concept?
What was your process for writing it?
And what are the things that youwant people to at a quick
glance, take away from understanding as every one of
our listeners is obviously goingto go out and order the book.
Link will be below, but tell us a little bit about the book.
Yeah, definitely. So I'll provide a little

(09:43):
chronological context because itwas very much in organic series
of and actions that led to the creation of the book.
The first really started with moments, a light bulb moment
that I referenced briefly. And I even talked about this in
the book too, where my wife and I had literally around our
kitchen table, as so many companies do, whether it's the
garage, the basement, in our case, it was the kitchen table.

(10:04):
We just started our leadership development firm and I had a
hypothesis of what I wanted to be, but I didn't have that X
Factor. We knew it was going to be
leadership development related. We knew it was going to have
something to do with, let's say,listening and other leadership
themes. And that's when my wife hit me
over the head and said, Hey, whydon't, why don't you think about
ways to think about music as a lens?

(10:25):
And I said, Oh my God, that's brilliant.
And so I started iterating on this idea that took the form of
articles, it took the form of workshops, it took the form of
little blog posts of the parallels I saw between music
and leadership. Being both a lifelong musician
and having at that point something like 25 years of
global leadership perspective, Isaw a lot of natural parallels.

(10:48):
And so I started documenting those in at the time.
It turned into LinkedIn posts. And again, my wife being the
brilliant one, she is, hey, whatif we'd started capturing these
LinkedIn posts into something that's more long form, like a
book? And I'm like, yeah, maybe I
didn't have a huge desire to write a book at that point, but
she's just trust me. And so you see where this is

(11:08):
going, We one blog post turned into 6 turned into 10.
And before you knew it, we started having chapters.
And then we started organizing the chapters.
And then I got really serious about actually writing a book.
Can I ask you about the LinkedInpost?
Please. Did you get any kind of
confirmation on the theme of your eventual book through your
LinkedIn post? I did and I love that question

(11:30):
because it brings up, I think for anybody who's a creator or
an entrepreneur or leader, it can be interesting what
assumptions you bring into a situation.
And I had a certain hypothesis or assumption that musicians
would get this and that non musicians would scratch their
head. And actually, no, it was the
almost the opposite. Musicians certainly appreciate
the concept. It's fairly obvious for them,

(11:52):
even if they don't have a corporate background.
It was the non musicians that really exploded over this, so to
speak, and gave me that confirmation.
And it was people particularly who did not themselves think of
themselves as creative or musicians.
Do you think those people wantedto think of themselves as
creative? Definitely.
And one of the one of the thingsI explore in the book and we do
a lot in our workshops is help people reframe and shape their

(12:16):
own mental narratives. For example, many people that I
encounter will say I'm not creative.
I could never write a song, I could never write an article, I
could never paint a picture or whatever.
And I love working with that because we're all creative.
One of my favorite musicians, I think you and I may have
mentioned it, bass player VictorWooten says every single one of
us is musical. We just haven't discovered it

(12:39):
yet. And I love that as a nerd for
leadership and creativity, because a lot of us have this
narrative and not creative and helping people kind of reframe
that and say, actually, you are creative in in lots of ways.
Do you like to cook? Do you sit down with your
daughter on the on on the kitchen floor and draw a picture
together? Well, you're creative, right?
Do you work on a new product at work?
You're creative, right? You don't have to play music,

(13:01):
musical instrument. It doesn't have to be the more
traditional arts from creativity, but rather how do
you think about something in a unique way, in a different way
than the obvious, and how do youbring those results in different
formats, in different media? Creativity is.
It's all subjective, first of all, and ultimately, who's to
say whether you're creative or not if you feel creative, isn't

(13:23):
that the only important thing? If it makes if your expression
of this one principle, this one project is creative to you and
you're satisfied with the results, that's creativity.
Incidentally, did you see that video of Victor Wooten who is
trying to explain that there areno.
He needs to. Demonstrate there are no wrong

(13:44):
notes. Yeah, he's.
So I love that video and actually he borrowed it from
Miles Davis. Miles Davis said there are no
wrong notes, and I leveraged that.
In fact, I referenced in the book too, particularly coming
out of the environment I grew upin.
In terms of corporate America, there's a lot of narratives
about quote, right and wrong andsuccess and failure for

(14:04):
generations. There was a lot of, and one of
the things I really love is helping draw lessons from music,
particularly jazz and improvisation.
But reframing that, what Victor is getting AT and what Miles is
getting at is a lot of that concept about right and wrong
are arbitrary made-up concepts that we've decided in our
society are right and wrong. And you can look to the world

(14:26):
of, let's say, entrepreneurship to say there's no failure,
there's no wrong, there's just learning.
I talk about this concept of listening with, as I say, with a
capital L that again is no, you and I can relate.
But it's this idea that the first lesson that we learn in
music, most of us is this concept of ear training and how
to listen. And one of the parallels I

(14:46):
noticed between that and leadership is this idea of
listening for opportunity, listening what's needed.
So, so you listen inside your heart and figure out what your
values are and what you want to bring forth in the world.
You listen around you, whatever environment you're in.
Let's say you're in a business environment, you listen to your
customers and what they need. Jimi Hendrix, by the way,
famously said knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.

(15:13):
You're in a role that's about product and brand marketing.
Your background is not technicalas a musician, but you
understand, but not from an engineering product discipline.
How do you bridge that gap between the consumer level
information that you're trying to get out there while also
being knowledgeable about product and the technology?
Yeah, number one, I was a reallygood listener.

(15:34):
So I listened to my engineering team mates and what they needed.
I listened to my customers, I listened to vendors.
Right from there I said, oh, I'mseeing some patterns. 5 out of 7
customers are all talking about they need X or for my engineers
keep running into this obstacle.Oh, that's interesting.
And from there I put on my composition hat as if I were
writing another song. I'm like, oh, OK, it sounds like

(15:55):
we need to develop this or create this kind of process or
whatever. And then I went into something
else. I talk in the book of what I
call the conductor, the leadership conducting skill.
And, and when you're a conductor, what are you doing?
Ultimately, you're facilitating,I believe, and you're help
bringing out the best in others.So a lot of what I was doing,
because I was not electrical engineer, I wasn't a mechanical

(16:17):
engineer, I wasn't a producer, Iwas helping facilitate and
coordinate. So I was helping frankly bring
together different part departments with ensure
different processes, different activities that need to be
brought together that frankly, alot of times we're not
communicating well together. I was using my natural passion
for collaborating and communicating and harmonizing to

(16:37):
bring people together. That's what they needed, right?
They did not need another subject matter expert, another
engineer, for example, I put on my my producer hat as if it will
to the years of production experience to say, OK, how do we
put all this together in a powerful way?
So I used a lot of these kind ofnon-technical skills to enable
successful outcomes. And it was again, no, it was

(16:59):
many years later that I put all these pieces together.
But yeah, it, it was fascinating.
And again, very transferable skills I would argue.
Yeah, definitely. What kind of perks do you get
when you work there? Do you get?
I'll never tell. You know, do you get access to
like recording recording rooms? Do you get to try out all the
gear before it's even like fullybaked?

(17:21):
You get to collaborate on things.
What kind of fun stuff do you get to do?
All of the above you are gettingto work with prototypes, which
is one of the best parts of my job is getting to try out gear.
And again, it's a benefit to shore, right, because you've got
hobby, semi pro and then professional musicians all using
these prototypes day in, day outin the club, getting real time
data about how the products are going to are actually working.

(17:43):
And we take that data from the field quote, UN quote back into
the lab was wonderful. If you're like me, and I know at
this point that you are, you nerd out about these things,
that it's a subculture that's excited about gear like this,
products like this, brand like this, and to the majority of the
population, it's not even on theradar.

(18:04):
They're not. They don't care about if it's
not on the radar. Do you find yourself excited to
talk about some of the work thatyou're doing with people that
really couldn't care any less? Oh, 100%.
They actually, when I worked at Weber, I learned this phrase and
it was equally true at Weber as it was at sure.
But you go out, let's say on a Friday night, you're at a club
seeing a friend's band play. There's maybe a friend, somebody

(18:25):
in the audience say, where do you work?
You say sure, and you get what Ilove is the following phrase.
You get the two s s, you get a smile and you get a story.
So you tell them just like I didearlier with you.
I said I worked at Sure. And you immediately get a smile
from a lot of people and you geta story.
Oh my God, my dad was in a band.He loved your products.
Or my brother was in a band, or my sister is a producer.

(18:48):
Oh my God. Or I'm a musician.
And Sure really bailed me out. You get these great stories and
it's so gratifying to be part ofan organization like that.
You worked at Weber? I did.
What was your role there? Very similar.
I was VP of product of management there.
For those of you listening or watching that are grilled nerds,
I am in addition to the very passionate musician, I'm

(19:10):
actually a barbecue and grilled nerd as well.
So I have a backyard full of smokers and grills and a very
similar ethos in terms of very passionate culture.
Tell me why. Oh my gosh, It is ultimately
grilling, much like those of us involved in music is a it's a
passion, it's a lifestyle. It is very Zen.

(19:31):
It's hard to describe for many of us.
Much like music, many of us grewup next to a loved one.
In my case, it was my father whoI grew up next to.
Grilling. That was a huge part of our
sense of connection. And I would say no, actually,
many years later, I saw it as a parallel.
It's artistry. I don't go outside to quote,
just grill a burger. That's not interesting to me.

(19:52):
What I love is the artistic process of a four, eight hour,
12 hour smoking process with brisket.
And to me it's varied and very artistic.
All all the prep involved. Sometimes it works, sometimes
it's not, and you're always tweaking.
Oh geez, how many hours do we have?
I sense another connection, yeah.

(20:15):
The OK, allow me to make a hypothesis here.
This is new, so it's still formulating this concept in real
time. The there's a similarity between
the grilling or especially smoking and music composition or
even just jamming and playing. It's that the artistry and the

(20:36):
beauty and maybe the fulfilment is made it primarily in the
process itself. It's not always the end result.
I don't know how often I've sat and listened to something I have
finished recording and felt really good about it.
I'm proud of what I've created, but I'm more satisfied in the
journey, in the process of it. It's in the the writing of it.

(20:58):
It's in the practicing of it. Same as preparing for for for
grilling and smoking. I actually enjoy the process
more than the final results. And don't get me wrong, I very
much enjoy a good brisket. But if I spent 18 hours
preparing that brisket and I served it and after I'm done

(21:21):
cleaning up and straightening upand I get to the table and it's
and it, the plate is clean and there's no more for me, I'm fine
as long as my my guests enjoyed it.
Amen IA. 100% agree. I I'm a bit of a student of
philosophy and I've been readinga lot about Zen Buddhism.
In the original definition, the word Zen means the way and so
make that connection to at leastwhat I see.

(21:43):
And again, I think this is very transferable is identifying
those things that fuel us. In my case, it's this idea of
experiencing the way and whetherit's writing a song, performing
a song, smoking a brisket, it's that process.
It's that way that for me is very fulfilling.
And I would invite all of your listeners and watchers to think

(22:03):
about what are those things thatreally fuel you and what are the
parallels of how you can find more of those opportunities.
In the spirit of transferable skills, this show is not just
limited to your professional career because a lot of the
skills that we gain in life veryapplicable in both your personal
and your professional life. Any advice out there for our
listeners for preparing and the process of smoking meat?

(22:27):
Yeah, have fun. And for those of us out there
that are vegetarians or vegans, here's the first thing I would
say. Barbecuing, Grilling, smoking.
As I'm sure many of you already know, it's not just for meat
eaters. You can do vegetables, you can
do nuts, you can do cheese if cheese works for your diet.
And I would just say have fun, enjoy the process.
Yeah, that's great advice. Enjoy it because I found myself

(22:49):
getting stressed out or hyper focused on things and not
enjoying it sometimes. And that moment when a friend
might come over and you share a beverage and you're staying out
there talking, you're not focusing on it anymore.
You're focusing on the social aspect of it and you're hanging
out and then it becomes joy again.
Just have fun and I love your word no of joy.

(23:09):
Just look for that joy. Everywhere in life.
Amen. So.
Actually, let's talk about joy because something that's obvious
to me is that you worked at thispoint at two different brands
that are associated with lifestyle, hobby, enthusiasm and
and joy. Did you go seek out jobs at

(23:29):
companies whose products or evenindustries you were like
extremely passionate about, or were they just jobs and it
happened to be in some of those areas?
I was coming out of college. I didn't have a lot of job
offers, again because I was a philosophy major, but I had a
few and so many of us the. Philosophy major also said.
But that's OK. I'm not in it for the job I'm in

(23:49):
it for. Exactly.
Well, and and that's a good parallel, right?
And so I had a couple job offersand inevitably I had one of the
first kind of leadership lessonsis what you might call values
and how to make a decision basedon your value set.
And, and the conversation went like this.
I basically said, dad, I have job offer a that pays a lot or
more. And then I have this really

(24:10):
great job offer from this company called sure, that makes
microphones, and I just love it,but they don't pay as much.
And he said, son, life's not about money.
Now, that sounds like an obviousstatement, But when you're just
coming out of college and you'vegot a lot of people around you
with a lot of social pressure ofwho makes what and who has the
biggest title and all that, thatreally cut through the clutter

(24:32):
for me. And it was a real powerful
lesson about life is too short to not look for that area of
passion or joy, whatever it is that you fuel.
And I was very, very fortunate to already have that for me,
that joy, which was music. And it became immediately clear
what I had to go do. I had to take, I'll be honest,
sure was not the highest paying job, but my God did it have joy

(24:54):
and my God did it have passion and it and, and it was a
powerful lesson that I've continued to carry forward.
Now as an executive coach, I bring that lesson up to a lot of
folks that I support too that are wrestling with these
difficult trade-offs. You probably also succeeded
because you loved it so much andover time the compensation
hopefully catches up. But ultimately you learn so

(25:16):
much. And whether you end up staying
at that one company for the majority of your career or like
most people, you find another job at some point.
Whether it's a year later, a decade later, and everything
that you gained and did it through that filter of joy and
passion sets you up for the nextthing.
And if that pays more, great. And if it doesn't but you still
finding joy and fulfillment in life, maybe even better.

(25:37):
Your father's advice seems like maybe philosophy was fundamental
and something that you grew up with in your house.
Is that the truth? It is.
We had a lot of books growing up.
I fell into love and philosophy of all places in French class
where we were. Actually, I was maybe not the
best French student, but I really love the literature that
we started reading. We started reading all this

(25:57):
French philosophy and anyway, that.
Another interesting lesson abouttransferable skills is you never
know how different things in your life will connect.
And I say that because in 11th grade I fell in love with French
philosophy, and then 15 years later I'm using that in perhaps
a very unexpected way. And that had to do with
strategy. So for those of you that have a

(26:19):
business background, you will know that many companies
obviously have to employ strategic planning and so forth.
And there actually happens to bequite a lot of parallel between
strategy and philosophy. And I saw that even further when
I got my MBA later. And so to answer your question,
yes, philosophy ended up being avery powerful tool later in my
business leadership career because you have to look at

(26:40):
scenarios from a lot of different perspectives.
And my philosophy degree was a powerful kind of foundation of
doing that, particularly as it relates to strategic planning.
While you think of an example togive me about that correlation
between philosophy and strategy,it I want to just touch on the
follow your passion, not the paycheck.
When you're first starting out in your career at a young age,

(27:03):
there's an expectation that you're not going to be making
the most money. You're looking for experience.
You're looking for that first door to open and gaining
experience. So hopefully you get one that
pays you responsibly as you progress through your career.
There is an assumption that we put on ourselves this
expectation that my worth is compounding and therefore my

(27:24):
value is compounding and I should be paid as such.
And I don't know if that is true.
I don't know if that is necessary, but it certainly is a
pressure that our society puts on us and we take to heart.
We, we, it's like a subconsciousdecision that we make that the

(27:45):
next job has to pay more than the previous one.
And yet it doesn't always translate into following your
heart and your passion. So there, there has to be a
balance. First of all, you have to earn
enough to cover your cost, your burn, feed your family, and even
do the things that you want to do, not just the things that you
need to do. I'm just saying I want to be one

(28:05):
of those people. I want to be somebody that that
chooses my heart over my perceived compounded value.
Amen. You know, one of the one of the
questions I like to explore in acoaching session with somebody
that that gets to the heart of this is a question.
I'm in this job that's burning me out.
I make all this money and it's killing me.

(28:27):
And then when I dig a little bitdeeper, they almost always have
some passion that they'd like togo into.
And they have a lot of fear around that, largely around
identity. Who am I if I leave this high
prestigious job? Who am I if I make less?
What will people think, right? And I often ask the following
question. What if you had a year left on

(28:48):
this planet, some version of that question and you know what,
Noah it all the IT immediately brings clarity and they like, oh
man, I'd quit this job tomorrow and I'd go start that nonprofit.
I'd go volunteer. I'd go spend more time with my
family immediate. It's such an obvious answer.
Immediate. So what's keeping us from
framing our lives, regardless ofhow much time we have left?

(29:12):
I don't know how, I don't know. I don't think it's an obvious
answer. It's noise we and to be
empathetic to all of us, we have, particularly in the
western part of the world, we have a lot of noise around
societal norms. You talked about identity and
value, meaning my value on this planet is one in the same with
what I make money wise or my title, my job that that is my

(29:34):
worth. And in other parts of the world
that is not the case. And what we unfortunately have
done is conflated our value on this planet with what we do, not
who we are. And so one of the, one of the
practices that I work with the folks that I supported is
extracting and decoupling who weare as people and what we do,
especially the link with money and that that I'm only worth the

(29:56):
amount of money I bring in, right.
Yeah, I struggle with this personally as a founder of a
company that grew and was acquired as the founder and COO
of that past company, I strugglewith saying, OK, what's next?
It certainly can't be anything that is perceivably lower in the
ranks than COO. So there's it can only go up.

(30:18):
And that means both in title, prestige as well as
compensation. It's literally is a personal
struggle of mine. It's, and you're not alone,
right? I think we've all faced that.
And again, it's these paradigms that we've created as a society
around value, worth, identity. And this is actually, again,
coming back to the theme of thispodcast, an idea of transferable

(30:39):
skills. And what do I mean by that?
So we all have these, let's say,limiting beliefs or areas that
we're struggling. What I like to do is tap into
that composition, that creativity, that curiosity, and
say, I might say to you, if you and I were in a coaching
session, Noah, OK, what's your next COO role?
But I want you to think creatively and you might say

(31:00):
something like, oh, I'm going tofound a new nonprofit like, or
I'm going to do this or I'm going to do that.
It's about breaking whatever paradigm we're stuck in and
thinking beyond that. Or I might challenge you and say
I want, I'm going to challenge you now to come up with a new
title. Kind of.
This starts with a different letter, or it doesn't even have
an acronym. Right.
That's, that's hard. It's hard to do that.

(31:21):
It's hard to do that. I would love to go work at A at
a music shop. I would love to go open a music
shop. And I get, I think the obstacles
for me are constantly, I don't want to say overthinking, but
doing the economic calculations and market analysis, doing
applying all of my business knowledge, expertise and

(31:41):
background into forecasting the eventuality of doing this and
it's perceived or potential outcome.
And stopping me from following passion because I'm interjecting
with all of my knowledge and skills from an objective
standpoint as best as I can, that squashes those hopes and
dreams. So this is where I'm going to
make a parallel to music, which I think you and some of your

(32:03):
listeners will appreciate and come back to your business
analogy. So in in music, of course,
there's this whole pedagogy of music theory, right?
And many of us get our Start learning all the rules and the
best practices through music theory to then become better
performers. What the greats will tell you is
after you learn music theory, after you master it, that's

(32:23):
exactly when you have to throw it all out the window.
So bringing on that and by the way, Picasso said the same
thing. Picasso learned all of these
great techniques and then threw them all out the window in his
final final. Years not to, not to this
besmirch the names of greats, but to say that you learned all
this. Now you throw it out and then
look what I have created, you also in part have created

(32:45):
because you learned all the rules and because you trained
yourself. And yes, you have to throw out
the limiting factors, how the perceived limitations, what I
can do with this because this iswhat I was told I can following
these rules, but now I'm going to interject with my own
creativity to innovate again anddo it in my own unique way
creatively. Feels a little bit of a cop out
to, at least on a service level,to assume that you can just

(33:07):
throw it all out and that you'restarting from scratch when
you're not really starting from scratch.
Correct. We are all a summation of our
experiences. Yeah, right.
So literally, are we throwing itall out?
No, of course not. What we need to throw out are
the things that are holding us back, right.
And so going into it from a leadership and business
perspective, it's how do I draw on all my business, financial,

(33:31):
business acumen in a way that isnot holding me back from
thinking about possibility. So it's more about it's
reframing from, because of all these economic realities I've
forecasted, I'm not going to do it because it'll the forecast
shows I won't be successful. Reframe it to what things need
to be true in terms of my market, my customer

(33:52):
differentiation, my cash flow, my funding, my innovation so
that I work around these challenges I've identified.
You talked a while ago about theparallels between philosophy and
strategy. This is, to me a very obvious
link is that when you're doing strategic planning, the links
are basically you identify your goals, your vision, and then
strategy is really the way you're going to get there.

(34:15):
Now, as you just pointed out, there are umpteen things that
may get in your way. So you identify, let's say, 3 to
5 scenarios of how things might go.
The strategist and the philosopher says, OK, what will
I do in each of these cases, right?
Scenario A occurs, what will I do?
Scenario B occurs, what will I do?
Scenario C, right? And you have a plan for each
philosophy strategy allow you tothink from all these

(34:36):
perspectives, right? But here's what the innovator
does. He or she never allows them to
get stopped from getting to the vision.
It's just like, oh, OK, path A doesn't work.
I'm going to go to path B, but Iwill not stop.
I will absolutely refuse to get to where I'm going.
It may be different than I expect to.
I might go over a mountain rather than under a bridge, but

(34:58):
I'm going to get there. It's the classic what's working.
Let's double down on what's working, what isn't working.
How do we learn from that? And then how do we pivot and
integrate? Do you think people struggle to
do that when evaluating their own strengths?
Oh, it's arguably it's the hardest thing to do is to look
at oneself, particularly strengths as a coach.
One of the first things I do is usually when I'm working with

(35:20):
somebody, a lot of that inner critic, as you talked about the
devil on your shoulder. And particularly I work with a
lot of high achievers. A lot of these folks start every
conversation of all the things that that they don't have, that
are not working, the things they've screwed up.
And what I love to do is flip the frame and say, let's talk
about some of your superpowers. And they say, I don't have any

(35:41):
super. I'm not very good.
I'm not this. And then we look at some data
and we might look at a personality report or 360 or
some experience from their career.
And they're like, actually, I guess I am fairly creative or
I'm pretty good at analytics or I'm pretty good project manager.
Again, transferable skills. I'm actually pretty good with
people. I actually really good at
building relationships. One of the hardest things we are

(36:03):
is A to look at ourselves and B recognize strengths and then to
leverage those strengths to get past these limiting beliefs,
whatever they may, because it's almost, in my experience, know
as a coach and a creator and a business person, the biggest
obstacle I know it sounds like acliche is almost never something
external. It's the internal voice.

(36:23):
Now we tell ourselves it's oh, it's funding or it's audience or
it's whatever, but it's almost always something that starts
internally about a belief of something that can't be done.
There's a there's also a part inleadership about making a choice
to say, and I'll speak about myself as an example.
My strength tends to be more conceptual.
I'm not a quantitative, I'm not an analytical guy and I know

(36:44):
that. So using the lens of music, I
might say, OK, what can I learn from music on that?
Oh, one thing is look around me and who can I add to my ensemble
to add to that, let's say area. That's not a strength.
So I'm a great guitar player. I'm not a good bass player.
I'm a terrible drummer. So what does that mean for my
ensemble? Let me find the world's best

(37:06):
bass player in my community. Let me find a Rockstar drummer.
Compliment me. The same is true in business.
Yes, you can quote, fix your weaknesses if you choose.
You can also find a Rockstar analytics guy or gal, right?
Or if you're that quant person who's a really great creative
thinker, how can I add them to my team?
So this idea of broadening your ensemble rather than trying to

(37:26):
fix or change yourself. Yeah, I like that you use the
proverbial Rockstar. That's usually the analogy used
in business, but you literally used it in the example of a
band. It's so obvious when a band has
a weak link. It's less obvious when a
leadership team in business has a weak link.

(37:46):
There's a, I'm sure you know this book, Noah, but for your
listeners and watchers, there's a classic business leadership
book called Good to Great. And in that book they talk
about, the author talks about the five levels of leaders and
leadership. Level 5 is this idea of you are
measured as a level 5 leader of how well you have grown other
leaders, not how well you're doing, how well you've grown

(38:09):
others. And so that's a big metric for
me. And I think a lot of coaches,
whether you're an athletic coach, executive coach or
producer in a musical setting, whatever the word coach might
mean to you, it's not about you.It's about what you've enabled
and that person you're supporting.
Yeah. So that's fantastic.
You've talked about some of the work that you do right now.
So tell us a little bit about specifically the type of

(38:31):
leadership coaching that you do now.
Absolutely. So the firm that that I lead
along with my partner, my wife as well, Michelle is called
Audira Labs. That's relevant because in Latin
the word Audira means to listen.And so we are a boutique
leadership development firm thatprovides one-on-one executive
coaching, team development workshops in keynote speak.

(38:52):
All about that starts with the premise that that the best
leaders learn how to listen. And another kind of key thing is
that we use music, as I've referenced, as a mode and as a
practice to help leaders think about new ways to lead and
amplify. So aside from one-on-one
coaching, we do team workshops that use musical concepts,
musical instruments, musical exercises to be interactive, to

(39:13):
be experiential, help people communicate, collaborate and
have greater impact. And then finally, we do keynote
speeches as well. In any of your workshops, do you
find that there are individuals who are don't have a musical
background and are maybe apprehensive and how do you get
them to break out their shell and to participate?
Yeah, excellent point. And yes, there are.
I would say there's a good maybe3030% in our workshops that

(39:36):
start off a little apprehensive.And again, it's fascinating
because a lot of folks have a mindset that they are not
creative and that they cannot engage in something that's
creative. Or if they do that, they will
somehow be made fun of it. It's some story like that.
What I love it is during the duration of a workshop, shifting
those mindsets to actually, you are creative.

(39:58):
You can be creative and you willbe.
And I say well, because a big part of our workshops is getting
people to experience something that is creative.
For example, one of the things we do is have people literally
write what we call leadership anthems as groups, as little
bands, and they'll talk about the, let's say, the mission,
vision values of their team or their company and create a song
around it. And so by the beginning of oh, I

(40:18):
can't do this, this is scary too.
Oh my God, I just wrote a song, performed it from my colleagues
and had a blast. And it's related to what I do
everyday and they walk out with a new perspective.
Oh, they walk out with more thana new perspective.
They walk out with something tangible that they're proud of
and quite unique. Much better than a branded
tablet of paper or a pen from the conference or event.

(40:41):
They walk out with a piece of music that they created that is
specific and unique to them. Amen, Amen.
It's a lot better than a boring PowerPoint slide that they had
to watch right? But do you actually?
Can I ask you about that from a skills perspective?
What is your answer to the presentation slides?
That maybe there is a necessity to having content above and in

(41:05):
front of everyone? What is your answer to that
solution? Do you have one?
I am learning one. I would say a couple things come
to mind. Steve Jobs, who I know was
brilliant. He was not a perfect human, but
he was brilliant and he had a couple phrases on.
This is if you're having to relyon a PowerPoint slide to engage
your audience, you don't know the material well enough.

(41:26):
Yeah. Now he would occasionally have a
slide or two behind him to maybeset context.
What I found as a coach, as a leadership instructor, as a
musician, and it's a bit of a bias as you want to engage your
audience, you want to interact. So yes, of course you could have
a slide or some kind of prompt behind you that's really perhaps

(41:46):
necessary. It's not sufficient.
So what I do is I may have a concept or a model or a
framework that's behind me and that's maybe they're the only
thing I threw behind me. The rest of it is a series of
interactions with the audience where I'm talking, I'm asking
questions, I'm listening, facilitating.
I'm having them interact with each other, taking this idea or

(42:07):
this concept in their own way and then applying it because
they're experts. They're the experts.
Where could anybody listening find more information about your
practice, the services and wherecan they learn more about you?
Yeah, thank you so much for asking again.
It's been a true delight to to jam with you today.
I think the easiest place is to go to my personal website,
stevenjkohler.com. On that, you can learn about my

(42:30):
leadership for Madeira. You can learn about my music,
which is on Spotify. And please follow me if you
haven't already. And then my keynote speaking as
well. And I'd love to connect.
I genuinely enjoy connecting. Send me an e-mail, send me a
text, my phone number's U there.Send me a DM.
I'd genuinely love to connect with you.
Very generous and gracious of you, so thank you.
I appreciate you spending the time with us.

(42:50):
I've enjoyed this. I like how you said jamming with
you today because that's what itis.
And that really is the message of your book, The Leadership
Anthem, which is the blending ofmusic and how music can
influence your leadership style through the philosophy and the
theory and all that stuff. So that was a perfect use of
that word, jamming here togetherverbally and intellectually.
So thank you for being here. It's been a true pleasure and

(43:11):
honor to have you. It's been my honor, Noah, thank
you so much. A huge shout out to the show
that what you're doing. I think it's powerful mission
and I know what an impact that it's making to everybody.
Thanks so much. I want to thank Chris Brown for
recommending Steven as today's guest and to you, our listeners,
for joining us on this episode of Transferable Skills.
Remember, the skills you've gained can take you anywhere.

(43:31):
Until next time, keep exploring those transferable skills.

All Episodes

Product & Brand Marketing into Music & Executive leadership Coaching | Stephen Kohler [35]

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

Cold Case Files: Miami

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Product & Brand Marketing into Music & Executive leadership Coaching | Stephen Kohler [35]