Aligning Your What With Your Why to Maximize Time
April 28, 2022 | On the She Leads Now Podcast
Katie Burkhart appeared on the She Leads Now podcast for a conversation with host Sabine Gedeon. She talked about her focus on making the most of her time — and how that led her to the purpose-driven model for teams.
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excuse any typos as we tried to capture the conversation as it happened.
Sabine: Thank you for joining me on another episode of She Leads Now Podcast, where we help career and entrepreneurial women gain the tools to develop a success mindset, create winning strategies, build collaborative relationships, and take bold action toward creating impact and fulfillment in their lives and careers.
I'm your host, Sabine Gedeon, and I'm on a mission to awaken and activate women and emerging leaders so they can tap into their innate leadership ability, elevate their influence, and create the impact they were destined to make. If you are ready to up level your confidence, courage, and influence, you've come to the right place.
Join me weekly for insights, strategies, and resources to help you grow, develop, and embody the leader you are meant to be so that you can make the impact. You know, you are called to make and establish the legacy. You've always dreamed the world eagerly awaits the emergence of your brilliance impact and influence. So, with that, let's dive into this week's episode.
Sabine: Hello, and welcome to another episode of She Leads Now Podcast. Joining me today is Katie Burkhart. Katie is a serial entrepreneur, a keynote speaker, a minimalist designer, jargon slayer, and sharp communicator. She's also the mastermind behind MatterLogic. And today she's really gonna be talking to us about how to make the most of your time, and so I'm so excited to get into this conversation. Welcome to the show, Katie!
Katie: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Sabine: Yes, same here. Same here. So, without further ado, I'd love for you to share with us a little bit about what you do today, cuz you do a lot. And also, what are some of the key things that led you to stepping into this place of being a serial entrepreneur?
Katie: Absolutely. So, I think it all really started with my very first job, which was as a lifeguard at the pool I used to go to as a kid. By the time I actually got to be the really cool lifeguard, a great deal less people actually came to the pool. And so, I spent a lot of my time looking at an empty pool and watching the time tick by. And what I determined—even as a high school aged kid, college age kid—was I don't have any problems working hard for a living, but I really don't want to work in a job where I'm literally watching time pass by that I will never get back. I need to do something where I'm really engaged. I'm really excited. I'm really contributing. You know, I get to the end of the day, and I feel like that was a really good day
Flash forward post college, I was working at a job which I was very excited about. I was working really hard, really wanted to contribute, but I happened to be working with a manager who was an extreme micromanager. And people are like, well that must have really hurt your feelings. I'm like, my feelings were not the issue. My issue was she was preventing me from doing a good job because she would randomly pick things to focus in on and not really give any good reason for why this was the priority. And as a result, it was really difficult for me to meet her expectations, and I feel like I was keeping the project on track the way I needed to. And that was really frustrating thing for me. And I determined at the end that this isn't really how I wanted things to work.
How could I get to a place where they didn't really work that way? And through just a turn of fate, I ended up spending more time in my business. My first company—which is called Matter 7, which had been working with groups that would classify themselves probably as mission-driven, originally nonprofits exclusively--ultimately worked with founders directly. They’re always a little bit more to their business. They weren't really there to do widget making. They were there to do something beyond simply widget making and needed help telling their story, which is really what we focused on. It's what we focus on today. How do you tell people who you are, what you do, and why that matters? What we found in that process was that once we had set up those pieces, organizations had a very hard time making decisions against them and actually shifting to run their business in a way that made sense with the story they told.
And very quickly, you'd end up with a disconnect, and then they'd have to redo the story again. It just ended up being this not particularly productive cycle of actually doing what it is that they came to do in the first place. And so, as someone who is a minimalist designer in sort of the broadest sense of the term, I ended up backing myself into the purpose-driven model and saying, “Okay, we really need to help you understand how you do things so that there's a point to everything that you're doing every day.
And that's what my second company works on. And then through our proprietary system, actually working with organizations to say, “Let's really take this and break this all the way down into whether or not we should even have this meeting today to make sure that you're really making the best use of your time, you're really valuing the people that you work with, and you’re really delivering value what matters at the end of the day.
Sabine: I love that. So, it sounds like, just based on your own journey, you were in a space where you felt disconnected from the work, like there was no purpose, no meaning to it. And so, you've kind of navigated your career and then started a business that now supports organizations in getting that clarity and actually living it out. How much of that teenage girl do you find showing up on a regular basis where, as you're working with clients, you go back to, “Okay, I remember what it was like to work in an organization or to work in an environment. And so, I'm bringing that experience to help shifts to make it better for the other employees.”
Katie: Absolutely. Every day. I had a conversation with a team member a couple days ago who said, “You know, the client—this was a Matter 7 client—said ‘we have this opportunity. We're gonna have a camera on site. Is there other stuff we wanna do with video?’” And he just sort of looked at me and was like, “I wasn't quite sure what to do with that.” And my immediate response, without even thinking, was to very bluntly say, “Well, what's the point?”
And that gets back to that time issue. I could spend all day interviewing people aimlessly about all sorts of different things. And I would have terabytes of video content, but that may be a complete waste of time if we don't understand the point of interviewing them in the first place. Is there some goal we're trying to achieve? Does it help us to meet our outcomes? Is there a reason that we're actually taking the time to put this video content together, and once that stops wasting time, you're also are gonna get a better end product? Because we can think about in this example, who are you gonna interview? What specific questions are you gonna ask them? What are we gonna do with the footage at the end of the day? So it ends up being just better time spent as well as better results.
Sabine: Yeah. Yeah. And so you bring me back or something that you said makes me think back to a talk that I had recently where I was talking about how do you create this sense of belonging in organizations—especially in the environment that we're in right now, where people are working remotely. We’re a lot more disconnected than connected because the building isn't there. And one of the things that I spoke to is at this is a period where organizations and leaders specifically need to double down on that North Star. And not only just double down on it for pretty marketing material but double down on it in decision-making. Double down on how they treat the employees and how they communicate it.
So, it sounds like a lot of what you're doing today is reminding or helping them to identify what the North Star is and then creating systems and processes for them to actually live it out in their day-to-day business operations.
Katie: Absolutely. It's all about being really clear on what value do we deliver? And then, how do we make sure that everything we do allows us to deliver that value better and better and better? And as far as connectedness goes for your team, the first place where you deliver value is to your customer, your beneficiary, whoever you serve, but you also deliver value to your team. One number most foundational way, you say I value you is to pay you well. We're seeing in the great resignation for as much as we talk about meaning, and I love that conversation for a vast variety of reasons. People still come back and say, “I'm looking for a better paying job.” Like you are occupying what could be up to a third of my lifespan with whatever it is that I'm doing at work every day. Make sure that I have the capital to live a good life when I'm here and when I'm not. So, number one.
Number two is to respect their time when they're there working. Please don't ask people to do things that are a waste of their time. The third piece is... the wasting of time and the third piece go together because there's meaning as in, do I understand why I'm doing these things? Do they make sense? Because they think that's number one. Nobody wants to do things that they're like, I have no idea why I'm pushing this paper today. Nobody, absolutely nobody wants to do that. The second piece of it is to say, how do you connect their purpose to whatever you're doing as an organization so that you can make sure you're helping them to feel really fulfilled at work.
And there's a couple of levels that go into that one. You wanna make sure that they're getting to better themselves. They're getting to learn new skills. They're getting to master new skills. They're getting to improve themselves as an individual, whatever that means for them. But it's also something where they're getting to find that meaning for themselves. And I think this is where we have to be really careful that not every one of your teammates is here because they want to save the world. Some people are really excited to come to work and be enabled to do the best job they can. And that's what's really meaningful for them. Other people are coming to work because they really wanna make sure that they're providing well for their family, and they have the time to spend with their family. And that's good also. So, taking the time to really meet one-on-one and understand what's motivating your team members individually is what's gonna help you to best connect with them and see how they fit into what you're doing collectively.
Sabine: Yeah. That's a really great point and an interesting point. I'd love to have this conversation around what's important to employees, right? And we know that there's no one size fits all. And of course, people generalize all day long, but you know, I always think back to that meme, that's always out there that says: People don't leave companies; they leave managers. Right?
People aren't leaving because of money. They aren't leaving because of benefits. They aren't leaving because of these things. There is something within them that is missing. Or the relationship that they would want is missing. So it sounds like your philosophy is more around meaning is important, but that's not necessarily the end all and the be all, right? Like you create some level of meaning, and you allow people to attach to it based on what's important to them. But you're also saying not to neglect the actual physical things too—like the money, like the benefits, like the time off, and so on. Is that accurate?
Katie: Absolutely. Because what you're looking at is you're starting to treat your people as someone, not something. And I think historically we've treated people as things that are part of our greater business machine. And that's really a noisy way to look at your people and not overly productive because they're human beings. Part of their purpose, individual purpose in some levels, is more complex than organizational purpose because it will shift over time. It'll shift as they develop, it'll change depending on what's going on in their life to some degree. It’s not necessarily like you wake up today doing one thing and tomorrow being totally on something else.
But there are those people who have pretty dynamic shifts as well, as that the range of what people value individually is quite different. But what we need to make sure we're being really mindful of is that the goal of being purpose-driven is not to get everybody to drink your Kool-Aid and spend 20 hours at work because we are the end all, be all.
It's really not about you at all. It's about the fact that you are helping them to be a better person through the work that they’re doing every day. And when I say better, again that's something that's very subjective and based on what they're looking at. So how do you make sure that you are crafting a team that enables them to do their best work and to be fulfilled at work based on what they're prioritizing? And I think one of the first steps there is to recognize that, to your point, not everybody prioritizes the same thing in the same way. But that doesn't mean that what they're doing isn't valuable or isn't important. In fact, it probably is very important, you know? So how do we start to have that conversation as some ones versus if I give everybody my North Star and I talk to them about it enough, all the little cogs in the machine are gonna nod their head and move along. You’re missing the idea that this is actually a human being.
Sabine: Yeah. I love that. And I'm curious just because this is your wheelhouse and you play in this space and you've been playing in this space for a while. So even prior to the pandemic and then the great resignation, and then everything else that they're calling it these days, we saw a shift in the workforce in terms of millennials entering into the space and how they wanted work to integrate into their life—and certainly Generation Z and how they wanted work to integrate into their lives. So would you say—and I know this is obviously just your opinion—but even without the pandemic and the great resignation, were we already tracking toward this, where it was already tracking towards where organizations had to look beyond the task that were getting done or the particular skill sets to say, “Hey, we want someone to be part of this culture, part of this organization, and we have to meet them where they are.”
Katie: So yes, we already saw that. And a lot of that came through the lens of customer-centricity, and being customer-centric, and personalization to the customer. And we were already seeing that bleed over on personalization to the individual. We hadn't quite figured it out. Great. In fact, I am still not sure we figured it out that great yet, but it had already started.
Simon Sinek arguably introduced purpose in 2009—or built it out in a bigger way. My grandparents know what purpose is, and they're in their eighties. So, it's not that it's a new idea. The way I like to look at the pandemic is not to say the pandemic. I like to call that the great pause, which is what came before the great resignation. It's where you really forced everybody, almost universally, to stop and have space to think about what they were doing and whether or not it was worth it.
And people are coming back with different degrees of what that means. For some people, it's like, I gotta do like a total 360. I need to be doing something with climate change cuz that's my jam. For other people, that's I need to make sure that I know every hour I'm spending at work is worth it. And being in a work environment that allows me to choose when during the day I work—being more interested in the job I get done than how many hours I spend—because that's really what I'm interested in looking. What you’re starting to see in this great resignation is that we've just accelerated it because we all took the pause at the same time versus people coming to these at very different stages, very different points of what was going on.
Sabine: Yeah, totally agree. I love the great pause, and you're absolutely right. We all of a sudden—not that we had more time—but we had time to really think through what was important. So, along those lines, leaders within organization, because of the pause, had that moment to be able to think through who am I, what do I want? Like what do I want my life to reflect? What's important to me?
And so, we have a lot of people who are coming into what I like to call the awareness of themselves. And essentially, they are the key captain of their own ship. They are the leader first within their lives. And then certainly whatever environment that they're in now that they've had time for the great pause. What are some of the things that you are seeing or that you are recommending to your clients in terms of helping them navigate that awareness while also navigating the environment that we're in.
Katie: And I think part of what you're starting to see is a lot of people breaking off and saying, I'm gonna go be a freelance. What they're saying is, I really wanna build a big business. What they're saying is, I wanna be able to have the autonomy to manage my time, to work with the clients I wanna work with, to be able to have direct connection with the clients I'm serving. They're looking for something a little bit different, and it's because they're looking to move leadership into a skill versus feeling. These leaders, these bosses, are what's controlling how I'm spending my time and what I'm doing every day. So, I think starting to recognize that and helping people in your team to be able to embrace that is a big deal. And as a leader, that requires you to say, it's not about you.
It's not about me, the leader. It's about me helping to orchestrate all the skills, and talents, and purposes that I have working with me and help to put them in a position to do their best work. And how can I do that? And one of the best ways you can do that is to listen first and actually respond after you have listened. In so many cases, if you get to the listening phase, then we forget the second half of the conversation—which is I heard you and here's what I'm going to do about it. So that we're actually having a conversation, which is a huge shift. And because the difference, or the main difference, between people working as freelancers and people working as businesses is that one you're working largely alone or you're working as a collective. And what businesses have to offer—that, I think, is particularly unique over totally working... I've had some thought leaders suggest that we're gonna go to like a hundred percent freelance mode. Like companies won't really be a thing. And I'm like, eh, humans are social creatures.
And so as businesses, what you really need to start looking at yourself as we're a team, or an organization, or a collective. We are a group of people coming together around this shared purpose that we're all here to deliver this value at the end of the day. And I wanna put everybody in the best position to do so. And one of the value offers I'm offering back to them is the connection to the other people. We know as human beings that we value being connected to the other people. All of us kind of living in our little Zoom boxes alone forever I don't think is the answer. But helping people to embrace leadership as a skill and give them that trust, and that autonomy, and time freedom that they're really looking for and figuring out how and when to pull them together effectively, that's really what leadership and giving them the vision. The leader owns the vision and the purpose. That's what it is that you're doing when you're building a business.
Sabine: Yeah. I totally agree with all those points. And so, I'm curious, as you've stepped outside of corporate, you've built your own business, you've built your own teams, just looking through your journey, what were some of the key lessons that you've personally learned and taken away from that experience of becoming a leader?
Katie: Personally? I think one of the biggest things that you can do is spend a lot of time saying thank you. Not to the point where it's obnoxious and loses its weight but recognizing that even if you are—and I was just having a conversation with someone about this—even if you are just a one-person shop or a two-person shop and it's like you and the frog in your pocket, like the frog's still in your pocket. There's always a team there. You have a bookkeeper; somebody helped you set up your website. Somebody is proofreading your articles. At the very, very, very beginning, my assistant was my only team. But somebody was always there was helping me to do my work. So, I think having the gratitude for that and recognizing what they're bringing to the table and that you wouldn't be able to do things without them. I think it all of a sudden changes the conversation from they owe you something to you owe them because you wouldn't be here where you are without them.
The other piece I would always leave is, as a leader, I invested. I took too long to invest in myself and spent a lot of time figuring out—oh, I get this. I've read the articles, but whatever, we're gonna muscle through. We're gonna figure it out. I should have brought on a coach a lot earlier. I should have brought on my editor earlier. These are people that help you as a partner to think through your thoughts, put pressure on your thought process, and get you to better work through whatever it is that you're doing. And I've just found that we would have cleared a lot of hurdles a lot earlier if that other person was there to push up against me, and to question, and to make me question myself so that I was really pushing myself to be the best we could be.
And it's sort of a silly thing. I was a swimmer for a very long time, and all athletes have coaches. So, why would we not assume that leaders should have coaches? It’s sort of like, “Well, duh” once you actually recognize it, but it took me a while. And I don't know that I was intentionally not investing in it, but it took me a while to recognize the difference that the investment would make. And I would say to people really looking to be a leader—whether you're an entrepreneur, you're within a company, you're building that skill, or you're the leadership— remember to invest in your personal team to make sure that you have what you need.
Sabine: Shout out to the coaches. And you're absolutely right. I was actually just having a conversation with someone earlier. And I was just like, “The athletes who are winning these gold medals and are making these millions and millions and are performing. They're doing so because they've surrounded themselves with individuals who are pushing them forward, who see their potential, and who are helping to pull that out of them. And so I do think, maybe 10 years ago, coaching—as I saw it—was just reserved for the high-level executives in the company, or maybe the individuals who are considered high potential. Whereas now you're starting to see more and more people within organizations, as well as obviously from a business perspective, leveraging the opportunity of having a coach and the growth that comes with having a coach.
And so, you kind of led into my next question around pitfalls. So again, my philosophy around leadership is really that it's an identity, and yes, there are skill that you can build and that you can improve. But at the end of the day, we, regardless, share that same thing. It's not about the titles cuz you can be leading in your household, in your community, in your organization, and so on. But generally, if you are leading an organization—whether that's a corporate environment or your own business—there's a lot we don't know. And there's a lot that we have to learn the hard way. So, thinking through maybe even your experience, or just based on what you've seen in the marketplace with leaders that you've supported, what are some of those initial pitfalls that you've identified?
Katie: Say “no” more, which is so important. It's like one of the key shifts that we talk about with purpose-driven business is no. No is the best word. If you really want to be successful, you should say no much more than you say yes.
And when you say yes, you should have given that the careful consideration it requires before you say yes. Otherwise, you will end up totally living in noise, totally overwhelmed. And it takes a long time to get out of the noise once you've dropped yourself into it.
The other piece that I would give—it's not so much an early pitfall, it's like a perpetual pitfall—is I really don't like to promote myself. Which surprises a lot of people because when they ask me to speak, I'm generally pretty transparent. I'll answer whatever you ask, but I don't have a great desire to be the influencer—with my face on billboards and things like that.
And so I've always shied away from, how do we market what we're doing? How do we get our unique point out there? Even though ironically, that's part of what one of my companies does for other people. And what I've learned in that is there are ways to get your voice out there that will work for you. But the longer you wait to get your voice out there, the longer it will take you to scale your reach and to really be doing the things that you wanna be doing. Because if nobody knows you're here, you can't help anyone. And that's something I've had to come to greater terms with and get more comfortable doing and finding ways to do it that work for me. Some people are gonna love their YouTube channel. Some people wanna start a podcast. There's lots of ways to do it, so figure out what works for you.
But the, the sooner you can start stress testing your ideas, stress testing what it is you wanna share, do it. If you're really looking to go and do that, even if it's within your organization, how do you make sure you're not making it about your ego? That's not a great idea, but how do you make sure that you are not afraid to speak up in that meeting? You're not afraid to put the new idea forward? You're not afraid to ask the question that says, “So what's the point of this?” because you need to.
Sabine: Yeah. I love that. I love the one that you started off with. Say “no” more, for sure. I've always said that. No is a complete sentence. And it has been in the great pause that I've really been learning to set boundaries. And that goes along with that whole piece around when you say no, when you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else. So really carefully think through what is it that you're saying no to, and in this time of burnout being so easy, I do think that that is a great area for leaders to focus on, in particular.
So when you think about—in just a couple questions here, last questions here—so, when you think about your leadership philosophy and how you operate, obviously you're going into these different organizations, you're helping them get clear on what their purpose is, what their North Star is, how to communicate that, and how to live that out. When you think about your own leadership philosophy and how you've developed over time—based on your own experiences and what you've seen from others—how would you define your philosophy or your style?
Katie: I don't know that I've ever done that other than to say the style that I try to teach everybody else is to respect people's time. And if that's my team, do I need to put you all in this meeting today, or is there a better way I can get you that information? Is there something I can do to make you more successful? Can I protect you against the client who's making unreasonable demands?
I don't ever want people wasting time. Conversely, I don't want clients wasting time. So, we spend a lot of time—regardless of which company—saying, “What's the point of this?” How are we gonna make sure that this will move the ball forward? And have we spent a lot of time not being as interested in how cool we can say it is or how many data sources we can cite to prove our own point? But really getting comfortable that our role to synthesize all that down into something people can actually use because that's what really matters at the end of the day.
Sabine: I love your focus and your emphasis on the value of time. I think that so many of us take for granted that it is a valuable resource. Just like money, we protect money. We protect all these other things. And so really shifting into a mindset where you see time as true currency, and you're looking to maximize it or multiply it just like we would money.
So, I love that focus. Just a couple last questions as we're running out of time here with regards to book recommendations. I am a firm believer that leaders are readers. So, I would imagine that there are some books that you've read or maybe one book in particular that stands out to you as a repeated go-to or one that had a big impact on your journey?
Katie: I read so much. That's a really hard question to answer. Based on a conversation that I was having on LinkedIn today, the book I'm gonna point you to is, I believe, called Everybody Writes. Yes, Everybody Writes, which is written by Anne Hanley. I've had the pleasure of meeting and listening to her speak, and I have been following her newsletter for a couple of years. I would recommend you subscribe if you have not.
But what I like about her work is she does cover writing for content, marketers, et cetera, but she also covers writing for the reality that everybody writes. And in an increasingly remote world with people saying, I don't really wanna sit in eight hours worth of meetings today, you are gonna have to figure out how to write a productive email. It sounds incredibly lame, but that muscle, I think a lot of us have allowed that to wane versus really working to make sure that we have that where it needs to be. We left school, and we're like, we're not writing our five-paragraph essays anymore, so I'm not gonna worry about it. But you do need to worry about it. And I find that she has a wonderful sense of humor. She's pragmatic. She finds a way to tell you a story while telling you about writing at the same time. So, if you haven't checked that out, I'd recommend it.
Sabine: Yeah. I actually just got put onto her at the end of the year last year by someone. And what I love about her is, to your point, she teaches you how to write. She tells you a story, but it's her authenticity that really pushes my eye. And I think that's the thing that draws people in. She is who she is, and it comes through in her written communication, which I think is an amazing skill to have and to be able to develop.
Katie: Yeah, she's in my newsletter. She talked once about having a grace squirrel being an inspiring animal or some crap. And I was like, you're my grace squirrel. Every time I'm working on my newsletter, I'm like, how do I make this more like Anne's newsletter? Because I just feel like she nails that—her as much as you appreciate the content.
Sabine: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Katie, for joining us here. How can the audience connect with you? Where do you hang out on social?
Katie: I'm one of the weirdos who mostly thinks social is terrible except for LinkedIn, which is where you can find me. And I do accept all connections, all messages. I will get back to you.
So, if you wanna say, hey, you have a specific question, or whatever, please feel free to connect with me there. The other place to find me is through newsletters. And I promised we do our very best to make sure that they are not a waste of your time, as I do with everything else. So, I personally have one. I also send one every week, which isn't really a newsletter. It's actually one point I try to make every week about how to better run a purpose-driven business. And I call that Weekly Logic. So, if you actually go to www matter logic.co/weekly, you'll have the ability to subscribe to one or both, and I'd love to have you as part of the community.
Sabine: Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. We'll definitely get your LinkedIn handle as well as your website on the show notes as well. And I can attest to it. Katie and I met through networking through LinkedIn. She does respond, so reach out to Katie and learn more. So again, thank you, Katie, so much for being here today. This was an amazing conversation. Thank you all for listening to this week's episode. We will be back next week. Until then, have a wonderful rest of the week.