Podcast Transcript S2.E02. Condredge Dole

Lindsay Recknell Podcast Transcript 1 Comment

For season 2 of the Hope Motivates Action podcast, the transcript of each episode is available for your reading pleasure! This transcripts will also include links to tools, resources and tips I think you’d be interested in, some of these links will be affiliate links where earn a small commission if you click through to purchase. Thank you so much in advance for supporting my small business!

My interview with the wonderful Condredge Dole is below…enjoy!

LINDSAY:  (00:03)
Hello. My name is Lindsay Recknell and this is the Hope Motivates Action podcast. Super excited to bring you season two – conversations with inspiring people, reframing the way we’ve traditionally thought about hope and its connection to our lives. Today is a great hot seat episode where Condredge: Dole will facilitate a discussion around hope and we will make the connection between innovation and hope in our lives. In our conversation, Redge and I will identify specific ways we can be more innovative using hope and tackle the impact of time and deadlines on our hopeful natures.

If you’re interested in any of the books, resources, and tools I mentioned in this episode, all the links you’ll ever need can be found in the show notes on your favorite podcast player or head to the blog and pod page on my website, Expert in Hope, and you’ll find them all there too. My message and my work is all about using the Science of Hope to motivate action in your life because without action, hope is just a wish.

LINDSAY:  (01:03)
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Hope Motivates Action podcast. I am Lindsay Recknell, who is typically your host. Today we have a special guest host, my friend and soon to be yours, Condredge Dole.

REDGE: (01:17)
Hello. Hello. Thanks for having me on here. This is gonna be fun. I like this idea of the hot seat. I got to really, uh, put the pressure on.

LINDSAY:  (01:27)
Not too hard. Okay. That I like to let people know a little bit more about you. So REDGE: is a certified pumpkin plan strategist since 2018. He is also the founder of the Maker’s Guild. His expertise is in both the creative and maker industries. He sees the world differently, so he approaches business differently. And that is one of the main reasons that I wanted you to be on the podcast today because your ideas around doing business differently and innovation around being a creative business maker. Super fascinating. So I’m excited to hear what you have to talk about today.

REDGE: (02:05)
Great. Well thanks for having me on. And uh, I’m really excited to chat with you about this concept of hope and innovation. Tell me a little bit about what your experience is with hope and innovation. What brought you to the point where this was something that you even wanted to talk about? Cause I’m super interested in innovation, being in a creative field myself.

LINDSAY:  (02:28)
Well I think innovators are naturally hopeful people, well maybe not naturally hopeful people, but definitely are hopeful people. I think the whole idea of innovation is the idea that the future is going to be better than today. And that is the definition of hope and wanting to change something, wanting to make something better, increase efficiency, make the world a better place, whatever that looks like. It requires innovators and it requires hope to execute on that.

REDGE: (02:58)
I mean that so much sense to me. It’s one of those things that if you don’t have hope, then how can you even imagine a better world? And so how are you going to get into even trying to innovate unless you kind of start from that place. So have you done any research into hope and innovation and the connection between those things? So I’d be really curious to hear what people are saying about that. What the research it says,

LINDSAY:  (03:22)
well, I actually don’t know of specific research related to innovation, but I associate innovation or innovators was setting really big audacious goals. And there are so much research out there around hopeful people and their ability to achieve really big audacious goals. And so I’d like to make that connection because if you’re an innovator, you have grand plans for what the world could look like. You know, you have grand plans for climate change and ending poverty and you know, a different kind of currency and all of these kinds of things. You can’t get there without establishing goals and then progressing towards those goals. Hopeful people are better at seeing the vision for the future, activating their hope circuit within their brain, which is related to the amygdala, the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. All those systems responsible for creating vision and locking in vision and using our memories too, enhance that vision.

LINDSAY:  (04:23)
And you need to be hopeful to execute on those big plans and to, to see that big vision. So there’s lots of research to support that. And then there’s also a ton of research to support the motivation and the willpower that hopeful people have or they’ve learned to increase their willpower and increase their motivation. And it takes willpower and motivation to work towards those big goals and to continue progressing those big goals in spite of obstacles and situations that might get in the way. And so I think the connection between innovation and Hopeful people is so clear and there’s so much evidence to support that.

REDGE: (05:06)
Yeah, that’s really fascinating. Especially that brain research that kind of connects some of those aspects of the way brains are wired and the way we kind of need that optimism in that hope in order to be able to kind of activate those areas of the brain that kind of contribute towards creativity and problem solving, that sort of thing.

LINDSAY:  (05:25)
So I know an anecdotal example that I read about in one of the books by Dr Shane Lopez, he wrote a book called Making Hope Matter. And he talks about a small business entrepreneur who started a craft beer business.

REDGE: (05:41)
I’m listening. Yes.

LINDSAY:  (05:43)
Bottom fell out of the market in the U S and in 2008 and he lost his shirt. He was absolutely on the edge of losing all of his things, but it was important to him. He recognized that it was a risky venture, but he could see the possibility cause he still had hope of the success of this. And so he actually took random equipment from abandoned breweries that he found around the state. He shipped them to his location. He innovated new and interesting ways to inexpensively get his business off the ground. They were within two weeks of opening and a fire took down the whole brewery and burnt everything to the ground.

REDGE: (06:27)
Oh my goodness. Oh, I can’t imagine after all of that getting just basically down to zero Oh, and that’s a terrible, okay, what happens?

LINDSAY:  (06:37)
Well then, no, he’s got to look at different alternatives, right? He’s thinking he solved all the barriers. He’s overcome all the challenges and he’s got this brewery and it’s kind of like Frankenstein, but whatever. It’s his, they’ve been innovative. They’ve got where they need to go. But now it’s a new set of challenges. Now he’s working with insurance companies and he’s working with other providers, but he’s also working with his community and he’s working with the employees that he’s already engaged in his vision and they all came together and innovated new ways. So creative ways to use the funding from the insurance company, creative ways to engage the community to support not only the rebuilding of their brewery, but also in the way that they delivered their product. So at the same time as rebuilding the brewery, they also came up with more products to sell so that they could fund part of the brewery rebuild. So they got real creative and real innovative to make that dream happen. And I think it was because this entrepreneur had that vision, had that really positive expectation for his future that he could continue to motivate and continue to action and continue to look for real creative ways to get the job done. And to this day he’s got his brewery and it’s doing its thing.

REDGE: (07:55)
What a cool story. That’s crazy that uh, he was able to come back from that. I just feel like so many people that woulda done the in, you know, uh, that would’ve been like, that’s it. I’m throwing up my hands and giving up on this. So really for him to be able to maintain hope through that is incredible. I’m actually, this is really interesting because as I was thinking about the sort of journey of innovation and my experience with it, and I think a lot of people’s experience, I think every time that you go through, whether it’s some form of innovation, there’s going to be those moments and sometimes it’s going to be long stretches where you have, you know, setbacks, major setbacks that can really suck all the life out of the project can really hold your ability to kind of think creatively and be able to push forward. Now I, I’ve experienced this every time I’ve worked on a new thing where I’ve been innovating. So I’m curious how you deal with these or how you recommend people deal with these and persist spite of these, the setbacks that we’re inevitably going to face.

LINDSAY:  (08:58)
I think the ultimate word you use there is persistence. Hopeful people have a level of persistence and tenacity. I think that is not seen in non hopeful people. I think that is a key characteristic, a key trait that is either learned or earned, you know, as as you go through life. But I think if you can consider people you know, that you would consider to be hopeful. People, they embody persistence and resilience and tenacity. You know, it’s contagious. You can borrow other people’s persistence, you can borrow other people’s tenacity if you aren’t feeling so hot yourself, go look for a hopeful person and get them to help you and support you when you need it the most, you know?

REDGE: (09:39)
Oh I really love that. I really love that concept of looking to others when you don’t have it within yourself. Like we have these social and professional kind of networks and that’s a big part of what the therefore, and we can help each other through that. That’s, I love that

LINDSAY:  (09:55)
it’s really super key. I mean, we keep talking about asking for help and depending on others around us to support us, but how do we do that? Because asking for help is hard, but the more we do it, the more other people see us doing it, the more they will do it. Right. And it just becomes this really positive, compassionate helping circle of goodness.

REDGE: (10:14)
Yeah, it’s so true. It’s so true. Taking that first step is the big challenge I find with that being the first person in your network to admit that you need help and take that leap of faith to ask for it.

LINDSAY:  (10:27)
Yeah, and if we keep seeing others we love and respect do it and model that kind of behavior, it just makes it that much easier.

REDGE: (10:34)
This is the thing that I really admire about millennials. I’m a little bit older, myself and I, when I see millennials, I often see them being more willing to kind of ask for help and be open about some of these things and it’s something that I really admire and respect that generation to take it on a little side track there. I think that’s definitely something that I see in the younger folks that I would like to learn from them.

LINDSAY:  (11:01)
And I really love that concept because you know, I often think about my nieces and nephews and compare kind of my nieces and nephews who are millennial generation and younger. And then also my parents and my friend’s parents and my grandparents. The gap between talking about mental health and talking about these kinds of more sensitive topics, the gap is in our generation. You know, I think our nieces and nephews, I’ve had a lot of those conversations, have had a lot of this education and I think they’ve taught us a lot of things because our parents and our grandparents generation, they didn’t have these conversations and they don’t know even what we know, let alone what our kids and nieces and nephews know. I think we’re in this interesting spot where we’re being taught by the younger generation, we’re teaching the older generation and you know, alerting ourselves along the way. And I’m really super encouraged to see that the younger generation is more compassionate and open and embracing these concepts. You know, that gives me hope for the future because as we move towards more compassionate cultures and more compassionate communities, I really think compassion has the power to change the world.

REDGE: (12:15)
Oh yeah. So true. I really, really loved that. And uh, yeah, I find it very encouraging too and I really love just the idea that we have something to learn from these younger generations because it seems to very often be the other way around where we’re saying, Oh, you need to learn from us. And it’s really aside from tapping into our community and our kind of support networks in those times where we’re facing the setbacks and we’re in the hard moments in the innovation sort of process on cycle. Are there any other tools that you recommend for people to kind of cultivate that hope that can be really hard to maintain?

LINDSAY:  (12:56)
Yeah, I think especially in the innovation space, if we’re fine to be innovative, be creative, open your mind to possibility, you know, spend some time brainstorming and maybe just dumping a bunch of ideas out on paper, on sticky notes on a mind map. On the wall, something like that without judgment, without consideration for the practicality or the rationality of it, like just get all of the even ridiculous ideas out of your head and out into the world where you can see them and then, you know, prioritize them or research them and investigate them, whatever that looks like. But I think by getting those creative juices flowing, that adds to excitement, right? You can, who knows what’s in your brain that you don’t know yet, right? If even if you’re like having conversations with other people, you can still have conversations just with yourself and, and tap into what’s in your own brain. You know, when you see it in the light of day, that generates that excitement and hope and future possibility, which will open the door to more innovation. But I think that’s a real cool, positive opportunity to, um, to explore the creative side in the pursuit of hope.

REDGE: (14:13)
Oh yeah. Oh, 100% if you could see me right now, I’ve got a big grin on my face because of that. I really identify with that kind of concept of the brainstorming and the looking at the different possibilities and kind of using that imagination of the possible to free oneself a little bit from what the constraints are of this particular moment to kind of get again on sort of a positive

LINDSAY:  (14:37)
and who knows where it takes you to allow you to kind of gain that freedom.

REDGE: (14:41)
I know for myself, you know, when I’m in the midst of one of those moments, it depends, sometimes a little walk, little escape from the moment, a little less or maybe a really good night’s sleep. Those are two very powerful things that I employed to just kind of help me kind of reset and get back on track. But, uh, of course you can’t always do that. But I know that’s something that’s really helpful for me in those moments when I feel like I’m just banging my head against the wall in this problem that I’m facing. Do you have any research or kind of experiences with regard to rest and innovation in dealing with setbacks and hope?

LINDSAY:  (15:17)
Oh yeah. So before I answer that question though, one of the things you said really keyed for me was giving ourselves permission to step out of the mundane. You know, like so often we are afraid to express ourselves or to put out into the world seemingly impossible ideas because of the fear of ridicule or the fear of judgment or whatever that looks like. And so I think it’s really important to give yourself permission to be as ridiculous as you want to be, to be as creative and off the wall and innovative as you want to be. Because I think excellence comes from those moments. And when you get them out of your head and into the world, maybe they’re not as ridiculous as they were in your head. You know, like they very likely have so much potential when you can see them in real life.

LINDSAY:  (16:10)
And so often we censor ourselves for fear of judgment or just that fear, uh, expressing what’s truly going on in our mind. The other thing there is to take yourself out of the scenario to free your mind to do something different, right? Sometimes if we’re focusing on it too much like writer’s block, if we’re focusing on it too much, we’re not going to get past that writer’s block. But if we walk away from it and kind of let our unconscious mind work on it in the background, our unconscious mind will break down those barriers that we’ve put up will allow us to be more creative and be more hopeful moving forward. Which is a great segue into your question. What can we do? What actions can we take? What environments can we surround ourselves with to break down some of those barriers? There is tons of research out there about how our body needs to be recharged.

LINDSAY:  (17:04)
So sleep is really super important. You can’t pour from an empty cup. You know what I mean? Like our brains use so much energy that if you don’t recharge with sleep with that complete shutdown of your conscious brain activity, you can’t be productive. You cannot be innovative, you will not make good choices. When you’re tired, you will also not make the right choices when you’re hungry. You will not make good choices when you’re being lazy. You know your body is, is not equipped and is not operating at capacity when you’re not taking care of it physically as well. And there’s tons of research out there to support going for a walk or going for a bike ride or some sort of physical activity that gets the adrenaline moving in your system and against the serotonin going in your body and you know all those vitamins you get from the sun and all of those things like that’s real stuff. That’s just not scientists telling you you need to do these things cause they need to sell more books. Those are real things that really help you are much more joyful and much more hopeful when you’re taking care of your human wellbeing. Then there’s tons of research out there to support and I’ll put some links in the show notes of our episode here because I know of tons of resources that will prove evidence-based will prove those theories as well.

REDGE: (18:24)
Oh, I love that. Well, I’m looking forward to checking those links out because I mean, I know from personal experience, I can’t tell you how many times, you know, I’ve been able to kind of solve a problem by, you know, just a good night’s sleep and the next day coming at it fresh and even there’s something, I don’t know, there’s something about the, what the subconscious is doing in your sleep that solving problems and that sort of thing in a way that isn’t a stereotype, but a, I’ve absolutely experienced that before where one day it seemed hopeless and completely stuck and I should throw this thing out. But you know, just having the persistence to go, okay, well I’m not going to give up on a yet, but I’m just gonna I’m just going to give it a little more time. And I feel like time is an important aspect when it relates to hope and innovation timeframes and expectations and all these things. And I think that’s all tied up into hope, but I haven’t really thought that through too much in depth yet. How does timeframe fit into this whole discussion?

LINDSAY:  (19:21)
I really like this approach. I’ve also not specifically tied time to a hopeful nature, but when I give it some thought, kind of here on the fly, hope is about progress and progress towards goals and I think it’s scope and scale so if we are making progress, even micro progress over time that leads to a more hopeful future. So if we’re setting goals because we’ve established that my definition of hope is goals plus agency, which is motivation and willpower plus pathways thinking, which is our ability to innovate and look for alternative scenarios to accomplish our goals.

LINDSAY:  (20:04)
So if hopeful people set goals, you have to progress those goals, you have to continue moving forward towards those goals and that continues to build confidence, continues to build hope and continues to build that expectation of future positive result. And time is inherent in that progress. It’s always going to take longer then you think most of the time, I want all the things to happen yesterday and patience is not a virtue of mine. It is definitely something I work on, definitely something that comes to mind a lot. I also stretch the boundaries of time. Personally, my husband will tell you I am on time exactly on time and for him that means I’m always late. Yeah. At least five minutes early and to me I have things to do in those five minutes. Well, we think that time is related in the progress, I will continue to use those five minutes to progress whatever it is I’m working on and he will use those five minutes to progress his value and his respect for the person that’s waiting on him by showing up that five minutes early.

REDGE: (21:20)
Yeah. Yeah. I love that you kind of highlighted multiple frameworks or ways to view time in relation to this because I was thinking for myself of an example just this past week here when I was working on in my woodworking business with my business partner. We’re trying to, we’re in an innovation cycle right now as we’re developing some new products and we had this kind of tight timeline set for ourselves. You know, like you say, the lack of patience and the like wanting everything done right now and reality doesn’t always play into that. But what was interesting, what we experienced was getting to a point where we thought, okay, this is as good as we can get with this thing that was, you know, we could go and it was, we wish we could do better. But it was one of those things where it just felt like every way that we could, trying to improve this thing and, and we thought we’ve gotten the best that we can do.

REDGE: (22:14)
And so we were like, okay, I guess that’s it. But then kind of having this little bit of hope and this persistence, like there’s gotta be another way. There’s gotta be a better way, but just kind of letting it be for awhile. Uh, what was it yesterday, uh, finally had a new kind of breakthrough idea that would allow us to save a whole bunch of time on the development on the product or the production of the product, which would save money and allow it to be sold for cheaper and potentially end up with a better result. But this was not on our timeframe. This was totally outside of our timeframe. And so it’s kind of frustrating in that regard that you can’t really, I find you can’t really control it. How do you deal with that kind of time being sort of less in our control than we would like it to be?

LINDSAY:  (22:57)
Oh, it’s the control piece. We all know that I’m a control enthusiast, I want to control all the things as much as I possibly can, and it absolutely makes me crazy to have things outside my control. I want to control all the things, and so part of my definition of hope is we can only control the things we can control. We can only action the things that are within our control and the rest of it we’ll just have to take care of itself and we can’t control all the things. We can only control our response to the things. And so I feel like you responded to it in a very hopeful way, right? You had this vision of what you thought it could be. There was this niggling intuition that said it could be different, but I picked this wall, had this obstacle that I’m not prepared, should be spending other time overcoming other obstacles, in the meantime and you took a step back focused on some other action, took some other, you know, progress something else, let your conscious mind work on it in the background and then came back to it after that breakthrough and focused on what you could control. Now in this instance, in this, in this scenario, I like that a lot. I like that. I like watching that growth and that progression. We can’t control time. We can’t control the things that affect our time and as hard as it is to continue to be conscious of the fact that time is outside our control. It’s going to happen anyway and like my father in law says plans in sand goals and concrete. The idea being that you set your goals as your vision and how you get there is that crooked path. The plans you make can be washed away based on circumstances outside your control. Okay. As long as you keep employing your pathways thinking to get you to that ultimate goal, however you get there on that.

REDGE: (24:50)
I love that quote. He’s onto something there.

LINDSAY:  (24:54)
He told me that easily nine years ago and absolutely stuck in my head and I reference it a lot. I have it on my wall. Like it is something that comes up a lot in my life. It’s definitely one of my models for life for sure. And it helps her rationalize that whole time piece. It helps me to remember that I’m not in control that it’s okay. If it takes longer or if I get to do it faster. The point is that I do it. Not how long it takes me.

REDGE: (25:20)
Oh man. So good. So good. So I haven’t really asked you about your own experience when it comes to innovation in your life and in your business and how it has been affected by your own journey of hope.

LINDSAY:  (25:33)
So I am a very hopeful person. Um, this is not just a career choice that I’ve made out of necessity. I definitely live and breathe what I think somebody with a hopeful nature is. I, I feel like if I asked other people, they would, hopefully agree with that as well. And so for me, innovation comes from or is definitely enhanced by my hopeful nature. I have so much expectations for the future. Sure. I always believed in the power of goal setting and my dad taught me that when I was very, very small and in all of its forms, you know, I, I also think goal-setting has evolved over the years in really cool and innovative ways truly. But I’ve always used goal setting as the way to innovate. So once I set my goal in concrete and then look for all the possible ways to get there, even if people look at me like I’ve lost my mind and there’s no possible way I could ever achieve that thing, I will continue to innovate and get there. Maybe the end result won’t look like the original vision, but I think that’s part of the innovation, right, is refining and measuring and re innovating to get to where it actually ends up to be. And I think that’s, that’s really important. I’m very hopeful and I continue to use that hope to motivate me to do the next right. You and I have known each other long enough to know that there’s always the next thing.

LINDSAY:  (27:07)
You and I are definitely cut from the same cloth.

REDGE: (27:08)
Yeah, definitely. You know, I’ve been actually, I was smiling as you were talking about that because I definitely, we’ve known each other for quite a long time and and I think it’s very true what you were saying about the way that you use hope and continuous kind of innovation in your life to move towards their goals and to achieve new things. It’s definitely been a pattern I’ve, I’ve observed repeatedly over the, over the years. I won’t say decades. I will say years.

LINDSAY:  (27:34)
It’s almost two whole decades my friend.

REDGE: (27:38)
One last question here. I love this conversation. I know we should probably not go on forever here, but for your listeners who are running a business or they’re involved in a business that’s trying to cultivate a culture of innovation or just in your listeners personal lives, what practices would you recommend that they implement in their lives to be able to do that?

LINDSAY:  (28:02)
I think the number one thing is to give space for creativity. Give space, give permission, spend some time brainstorming, whatever that looks like for you. Making lists, making mind maps, brainstorming with others, sticky note activities. On the wall. Give some time and space. Intentional time and space for creativity. For sure. spend some time setting goals, figure out what’s important to you. Figure out where you want to be tomorrow, next year, 10 years from now. The further out you get, the more vague those goals are likely to be and I think that key. I think that’s cool. You know the closer time-wise, the closer those goals get to the present day, the more specific and crystallized they are and I think that’s the beauty of allowing, allowing hope to take you on that path is as you move through your life and get closer to your goals, they get more concrete and and more defined.

LINDSAY:  (28:59)
So it gives space for creativity, set goals, and then also take care of all of your wellbeing. There’s a reason on an airplane they tell you to put your own mask on before helping others. If you aren’t taking that absolutely required time to recharge yourself through sleep, your food or exercise through meditation, whatever that looks like for you, be intentional about that time. You are not at your best when your wellbeing is not at your best and so whatever you can do to action, good wellbeing, definitely. I think that that will help in being more innovative and being more hopeful.

REDGE: (29:36)
Love it. Love it. Well, thank you so much for this conversation, Lindsay. I really enjoyed this. I’m feeling inspired to double down on hope and innovation in my business and I really hope that the listeners were able to get some great takeaways here from this. I love that those three points that you talked about and I think that’s something that we can implement in our own lives and a business could also implement in their culture as well to ensure that they’re able to kind of be as innovative as they can possibly be.

LINDSAY:  (30:06)
Awesome. Thanks so much. I so appreciate your perspective and asking questions about time. I especially like that thought provoking idea. I’m would definitely want to give some more thought to that, so thank you for your time and for your skilled questioning and yeah, I guess I’ll talk to you very, very soon.

LINDSAY:  (30:26)
Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the Hope Motivates Actionpodcast. These conversations have been so inspiring and motivating to so many people, and it’s my absolute pleasure to produce them for you.

This show thrives on your feedback, so if you find value in this podcast, it goes a really long way. If you’ll give me a five star rating on Apple podcasts, the next step in your journey to action your hope is to check out my virtual mastermind program, the flagship series, which is called Hope for Caregivers. These are 12-week group accountability programs designed to support those of us who are caregiving for others, likely at the expense of ourselves and our own personal goals.

As with all the tools and resources we discussed on the show, you can find links to this program in the show notes on your favorite podcast player or on my Expert in Hope. Also, when you’re visiting the website, check out the Shop page where you can take Hope home. This show is all about making hope tangible and practical because without action, hope is just a wish.

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