Well, hello again. Welcome to Season 02.

 

If you're a business owner and a business leader, and you're listening to this right now, I want to know what you want to hear. Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work. I'm your host, Erin Patchell, and welcome to Season 2. For those of us who are continuing this journey from season one, thank you. If you're brand new here, welcome. My name is Erin Patchell. I am the founder of a company called Positivist Group, which is a management consultancy based in the Ottawa Valley in Canada. I'm also, obviously, the host of Where It Is In The Workplace, and I'm the co-founder of a technology startup called The Trained to Help Project, trainedtohelp.com. But Weirdos in the workplace. This is where we are today. And there's a good reason why our values are authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose. So for the folks who are just joining us now, it's important to me because I was always a bit of an outcast. I was a rebel. I was a little bit of an outsider growing up. It took me a long time to figure out how to love myself and hone my strengths and my abilities into something that was valuable for the world and to unlearn how to be a loner and build community around me and people around me to help me and help others, help me help others to succeed in life.

 

That's what I'm doing now. It is a journey. I am not done. I feel like I'm actually just at the beginning of this, but I love that you're joining with me on this journey. I'm a professional problem solver. That's what I call myself. One of the reasons I call myself that is because I feel like I never know what I'm doing. That also pertains to this podcast. Season 2, we do have a bit of a plan, believe it or not. We have 45 episodes. There will be 45 episodes similar to Season 1. I am actually only going to be doing five solo podcasts this year because what we want to do is invite more people on the podcast to share the amazing work that they do. Every single person that we're inviting on the podcast this year has something, a special solution, a unique way of thinking and a unique solution to a real problem in the world.

Just a sneak peek, we're talking to Lydia DiFrancesco, who's a corporate wellness specialist and expert speaker. We're talking about a real relevant problem in corporate wellness, which is burnout. 

Talking to Lisa Strangway about how small businesses can revitalize their online brand. What happens when your brand is a little bit stale? You haven't been evolving with the times. And boy, oh, boy, are the times changing so fast. 

We're talking to Jen Broad and Laura Lobe from a company called Live Work Play. It's a nonprofit charitable organization in Ottawa, and they work with people with disabilities to support them to get jobs. And then they work with the employers to help the employers learn how to build a better workplace for everyone, not just people with disabilities. 

We're talking to Lauren Sheil about succession planning. What happens when you want to transfer your business or you're thinking about, maybe it's your father, maybe it's your grandfather, maybe it's you that is aging and wants to retire. My goodness, you have a generational business, perhaps a family business, and you want to pass that on to the next generation. What are some of the things that you need to think about there? 

We're talking to Tina Collins, who's an amazing executive coach, and she is supporting us in understanding what to do when your star employee has become a little bit toxic. What can you do? Do you terminate them? Do you fire them? What can you do to help them understand what the challenges are and help them evolve out of that? 

Then we're talking to Peter Georgariou, who is an amazing entrepreneur in Ottawa in the marketing and change space. He's talking about redefining value, your value proposition. How do you get to where you are right now, today as a company, to where you want to be in the future? Peter has a really interesting spin on it because he really works with impactful businesses, businesses who have really big social, environmental, or governance goals. 

We have Sydney Elaine Butler, who is an amazing neurodiversity advocate, building neuroinclusive spaces. We're talking about the challenges on a hybrid, working from home, working from the office. How do you go about building an inclusive environment that respects the way everyone needs to work? 

We have so many amazing guests coming on the podcast this year, and still some to plan. We've done several recordings. We've recorded over 10 episodes at this point of the season. We haven't even started the season yet, so that's exciting. We have many, many to go. We're going to be sharing lots of interesting content over the next nine months that we're together.

The podcast is going to drop same as always, every Wednesday morning, every week. You'll be able to get that on YouTube, on Spotify, Apple Music, iHeart, podcast, wherever you get your podcast. The season is really This season is really all about learning how to learn faster and solving problems quickly. There's a lot of problems in the world right now. I think we all feel it. I know I feel it. There seems to be an overwhelming, almost like an impending sense of doom is what a lot of people, how a lot of people are describing it. If you're feeling an overwhelming, impending sense of doom, know that you're not alone. You are far from alone. I'm certainly one of those people as well. I'm very good at keeping everything in perspective and focusing on the positivist, but also thinking about, I think about things very scientifically. I like to think about research and statistics, and it helps me ground myself. But there's this something in the background going on, even though that is all true about me, maybe about you, too. Even though we're trying to keep everything in perspective, there's still something that we're sensing.

There's something we're sensing, and we're all sensing this. There's a lot of patterns that are challenging right now, that are challenging us in the world at different levels. At the global international level, there's a lot of patterns. There's lots of patterns at the national level or the In North America. There's political shifts happening. There's economic shifts happening. It's a very interesting time. A lot of people are leaving their jobs. Something is stick to stick. I heard the The other day, something like, it was like 85% of employees are looking to... They're looking. They're just looking for jobs. People are constantly looking for new opportunities right now. It's a little tight. Money is a little tight for people. I think there's some people that are in trouble, for sure. There's always some people that are in trouble. But I think even people that are used to being all okay are feeling a little bit of a crunch. It's not about reacting, it's really about responding. So thinking about how to make smarter decisions. And that is literally why we are doing what we're doing this season and bringing 40 people with very diverse backgrounds onto the podcast so that we can provide you with interesting solutions or different ways to think about specific problems.

Within the learning and development in space, we call this vertical development. So we're looking to build context. We're not helping you build skills, we're helping you build context. So connecting the dots and seeing the patterns and Building what we call a mind map, a map of the information that you have in your head that you can use to make decisions, to pull in quickly in order to make faster decisions. So there's a lot of common problems that businesses are having right now and that people are having right now. It doesn't even matter what age you are. Although I think that a lot of folks who listen to this podcast do tend to be on the younger side Often, millennials and Gen Zs, Gen Zs and millennials who either own businesses or want to own a business someday. It's a real or maybe very soon in the future is a goal, and often neurodivergent in way. You identify with being a rebel, being a little bit of a weirdo. So, weirdos and rebel-rousers, unite. We're going to help you through the podcast, through the mentorship that we'll get from these amazing folks who are coming on the podcast, we're going to give you our wisdom, and hopefully maybe give me their wisdom, too, because I'm always looking for wisdom.

Maybe they can lend me some of their confidence, I hope. Confidence that we're going to get through this, and we will. Most days I feel very confident that things are going to improve, but even sometimes I need to borrow a little bit of that confidence from somebody else. So let's lean on each other. If you're a business owner and a business leader, and you're listening to this right now, I want to know what you want to hear. There's still lots of time to give me feedback check so that I can know exactly what problems you need solved. So send me an email at erin@positivist. Ca, or hit me up on any of those social media platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, although I'm really bad at checking Instagram, so maybe not there. I will definitely respond, and we'll have a good chat, hopefully. But I want to hear what the problems are. What are you struggling right now? What are you sensing? What are you feeling? What have you identified? Let's talk about that. For anyone who wants to become part of the podcast, if you are a professional problem solver and you consider yourself a subject at our expert in some way, I'd love to hear from you and see if there's some synergy.

So hit me up. Linkedin is probably the best. Linkedin.com/in/erin-patchell, E-R-I-N-P-A-T-C-H-E-L-L. Whenever I'm I'm feeling a little bit unsettled, a little bit ungrounded, a little worried, a little bit sensing that there's something off about the universe. The book that I usually go to is The Tao Te Ching, which is… this is the Steven Mitchell version, but I'm going to read verse 45 for you. True perfection seems imperfect, yet it is perfectly itself. True fullness seems empty, yet it is fully present. True straightness seems crooked. True wisdom seems foolish. True art seems artless. The master allows things to happen. She shapes events as they come. She steps out of the way and lets the now speak for itself.

I'm so curious to see what this year holds, and I'd love for you to follow along with us, and I want to follow along with you, so reach out.

In the meantime, don't forget to stay weird, stay and don't stay out of trouble.

Visit us at positivist.ca and trainedtohelp.com.