 How you doing? Welcome to Ibachi Talk. Go to the tech star here, and what's your name again? And you're the security guy. If you guys have been following us, like, I don't know. I mean, I'm co-hosting your regular show more than day show or whatever, but I tell you, well, nice to have you back. I'm glad to be here, brother. I miss you, man. I miss you, man. Look at how long my beard has gotten since you've been gone away. I mean it's starting to look like it's like. Keep going all down to my knees. Anyway, please grab yourself a libation, pull up a chair and join us. We have Heather Patterson. I want to say Heather, like, her father would say it. We just love that name. Heather, yeah, yeah, sweet. He laughs. Hey, we've got Heather here. And she's laughing already. And she's, we're going to talk about happier staffing. And you are the chief happiness officer, first one I've ever met. I love that title. I've never met one before. And happier talent development, which is kind of cool. Yeah, I like that. It's kind of ready. If you're going to develop talent, you might as well. That's right. Yes, I agree. So anyway, we always ask, I'm trying to figure out what this is going on here, but it's not playing. Anyway, we always ask our guests where you're from. All right. Where are you at school? Yeah. Let at. Okay. Give us your background, much as you want to share. Yeah, sure. Well, I'm originally from Maryland, from the East Coast, Maryland. Very much country girl, like my house, corn, hay, you know, like just cows everywhere, country girl. And as a teenager, we relocated to the Midwest. So I lived in Nebraska, and then I moved out to the mountains to Denver. From there, I moved on to Alaska. And finally I arrived where I'm supposed to be. Yeah, which is where? Detroit. I'm here. This is my rainbow. Oh, that happy place. That's right. My happy place. Hawaii. So I came to Hawaii eight years ago. It was partly professional, partly personal. But yeah, that was eight years ago, and I have landed. I'm where I want to be and where I need to be. Having me from the East Coast, and especially in January, February, it's not a bad place to be here. Especially coming from Alaska. I'm a Hawaii people in Alaska. A lot of folks from, it's kind of weird that we go back and forth. But where in the world haven't you been in the past two weeks? Two months. I'm telling you, what I do know is this, and I got to agree with Heather, this is the very best place in the country to come home to. And I've been gone a lot. I know you've been gone. I touched down on that runway up there. I'm glad to be here. Angus and I have been pulling the load, just so you know. You're always big time. He says, he wanted to grind a little. He's a little that happy to train you up. Yeah, I know. I was like, I'll look what's down this morning. Yeah, I was just like, yeah. Let's get him to jump. So let's come, good questions we can ask. But before we do that, okay, and I'm not going to rant today, but I want to give an alert because I've been doing a number of shows on cryptocurrencies and bitcoins. I saw that, thank you. And I've got some lectures to do around town. I've been invited to talk on that. But I want to give some people heads up because I keep saying it's your money and you decide whether you want to get in or not. Just like anything that's new, that's new. There are scams out there. So you've got to watch for scam artists, Ponzi schemes, people selling fake Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies. So they're out there. If you just go and Google it or Bing it and you can just search cryptocurrency scams, that will give you a heads up. Like I said to everybody, you educate yourself before you get into this. It's like stocks or bonds or anything. You have to do it. You can see SCC's filed some lawsuits against some major individuals for doing some Ponzi schemes, a whole bunch of stuff out there. So again, if it sounds too good to be true, it is. It will not make you happy. It will not make you. It will not make you happy. But mind you, Bitcoin trading at $2,300 and Ethereum trading at $2,330. See the smile on my face. Yeah, I'm a happy guy. And Ripple's not going up to $0.27 cents. And that's not the rum. That's the chief one. Okay, enough from me. Enough from me. Now let's talk about you. So tell us about how do you create a happiness thing? Yeah, right. That's the question, right? How do we do this? How do I make my people happy? That sort of thing. A lot of focus on the millennials, of course. That was gonna be one of my questions. I knew it. I knew it would be. Well, it really starts with the leader. I mean, that's where the tone is set is at the leadership. So the leader absolutely has to be bought in first and foremost. And a lot of people will think, well, you know, do I have to have like an employee gym and a cafeteria and a ping pong table and really beautiful furniture and, you know, salaries galore and things like that. And the very quick answer is no, right? Those things are satisfaction and they're also sort of fleeting. They're, they sort of play to the fact that we're always going to want more and more and more and more of these tangibles, right? So it's really about small daily activities, daily things that we do. It's not something that we just like give and hand over, right? It's the things that we do. So it's saying good morning. I mean, really and truly with a smile with a smile with your head out of your phone and engaging. Exactly. So things like that, giving a genuine and sincere compliment, solving problems. People talk a lot about burnout and stress and things like that in the workplace. It's because they're not making progress to the problems. They're, they're, they're stuck. Think about that. Burnout is when you're stuck in the hole. And I just keep spinning and I keep people for the most part are just like that. They keep all their cards close to the chest. They only solve the problem when they can get a pat on the back, but they don't solve the entire problem. And I think it's just a cultural thing that's happened over the decades. That's one of my issues with tech people is that you girls and guys don't share. Yeah, you feel like, okay, that's how I'm going to hold myself and hire a steam and make me happier. Yeah, yeah. No, and, and I'm so glad that you brought that up because for this audience, especially there's people who are are changing that. So for instance, this past October, I was in New York City and I visited a company called Next Jump. Have you heard of Next Jump? Oh, please got nothing to do with people jumping off buildings. But they're, they're, they're a firm that does like back office for employee benefits type of platform. incentive programs. But they're, they're really like what they do doesn't matter so much as who they are internally. And so they have a, a ritual, if you will, of talking about their mistakes. Regularly, like it is scheduled and intentional because there's so many developers. And they're going to make mistakes. Right? But they're trying to be solution oriented and really say, Hey, the mistake doesn't matter. What matters is that you tried and I mean, she did something, you did something, you tried, you went for it. And then it makes it really safe for other people to try as well. Yeah, I tell people you learn by trial and error, not by trial and right. Yeah, it's not an error. And the more energy make that means the more you're trying. Now if you keep making the same error over and over again, then you need to talk to yourself. Yeah, that's called insanity. I saw some, I saw a presentation by a guy recently who talked about this, um, learning velocity, which really occurs out there when you're outside of your comforts aren't probably close to failing on things because they're difficult. You're learning at a much faster rate than if you're kind of doing the same thing all the time. So absolutely part of, you know, advancing is getting out there and failing. So and that's got to be recognized as a way to be happy. Because you made the effort. Totally trying new things, getting results. So it really boils down. People ask me this all the time, like, well, like, what is the nuts and bolts? Nuts and bolts are results and relationships. Okay. I'm getting results at work. I'm making progress. I'm, I'm learning and growing in the, in my output. And then I have really great relationships, not like fun necessarily, but close connection, belonging. It could be fun. That's a nice, you know, outcome. But where it's safe and people are vulnerable and there's trust. Well, how many people do you see that are in their occupations that are not happy? Oh, well, I mean, the numbers say, you know, in terms of disengagement, it's like 70%. So 70% seven out of 10 to walk in the door every day. So aren't aren't there to have fun. They're there for what they're getting. They're getting paid. And they're doing the job. It sounds like a former government. Occupation. In government, do you get much engagement from local government? That'd be a nice place to start. Are you kidding? Give the union a shock. You know, I had someone text me not long ago with a headline. Oh, this place is really low morale was a state organization. And I responded, Yes, they probably do need our work. I love an introduction. You know, it really depends on the leader, like I said, the leader, and are you ready? And are you going to put in the work and put in the time? So if people are change makers in those organizations, yeah, I'd love to talk to them. So it's 70%. This must be a new industry within the business industry or in within whatever not even business, but even manufacturing or weather. It has to be 90. When I was growing up, I never had a happiness coach and never had someone come in. Now I was the class clown. So it didn't matter. Others but others, you know, I've never said, Well, let's go make this place. Yeah, I try. But be nice. No, he was happy to go check. Right. Yeah, I think it's getting more and more attention. I mean, with the changing of the of the workforce and the way that we do business and sort of the world is getting smaller and smaller, people are looking for, Well, what is my differentiator? And it comes down to the people. And how do I feel when I'm interacting with your business? This is a millennial thing. Is it like, is it just is it just a millennial thing for everyone? Personally, it's hard for the old guard to learn, you know, as a boomer who brought up the generation to take responsibility for whatever we have. Because they didn't want we didn't want them to have a we had. Yeah. Is it are you getting, you're not getting calls from the old folks, you're getting calls from the millennials, I'm guessing there are some more traditional or boomer leaders are going, Hey, I recognize that what I have is not working. So one of my best success stories is actually someone who is a boomer here in in Honolulu has been in his industry real estate industry for a long time. And he was like, I'm so skeptical of this. And which I don't blame him, you know, I understand like you've been you've been in the workforce a long time, like I honor that. It is successful. And you're successful. And he's sort of like, what are you going to teach me? And after a few sessions, yeah, after a few sessions, we I was able to give him really practical. And that's what I pride myself on real practical, you know, recommendations for these adjustments in his behavior, his communication. And then we work together with the team to build to build the relationship and help them get more results. And, and he's a raving fan. Oh, is that awesome? Yeah, I know we're going to jump to a break in a minute. But background in psych or how'd you how'd you end up in psychology and just the education piece? I wonder, yeah, great question. I have a degree from HPU and human resources. Awesome. Okay. Yeah. So it should be a component of every HR package. You would think happiness. But I know a lot of HR chiefs, individuals who are not happy people. Oh, they come across. And if you look at Dilbert, it's the evil HR person, right? So you go to Dilbert, it's the evil HR person. Most people think the person in charge of HR is not happy. Yeah, I know why she's so grumpy. Exactly. Exactly. No, I, I understand that. And there's a lot of rules and regulations. Just a week, two weeks ago now, I did a presentation with the Torkelson law firm. Okay. And, you know, we have differing ideas on our topic was handling political tension, right? And so the lawyer saying, you know, don't engage in conversation and keep it safe. And that's, that is one perspective. My perspective is engage, ask them how things have changed for them. How can you be a supportive employer? There's a, there's more risk in that for sure, for sure. But if we want to have really strong relationships, be happy, we might have to have some risk. Okay, cool. Let's hold that one minute pause. We're going to go take some break. Do you have a security minute when we come back? Yeah. Angus isn't here. I got you. He's off doing whatever he wants to do. So make it happen. Make it happen. We'll take a break. We'll pay some bills, be happy, and we'll be back in a minute. You're watching Think Tech on ThinkTechHawaii.com, which broadcasts five live talk shows from noon to 5 p.m. every weekday, and then streams our earlier shows all night long. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Hi, I'm Carol Cox. I'm the new host of Eyes on Hawaii. Make sure you stay in the know on Hawaii. Join us on Tuesdays at 12 noon. We will see you then. Aloha. Aloha, my name is Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I'm the host of Shrink Wrap Hawaii, where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well, this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this. We must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at. I'm here on Tuesdays at 3 o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha, and you're live. Aloha, how you doing? This is Gordo, the security guy. This is Gordo the tech star here, and I'm here with my good old buddy, and the security guy. Do you have a security mohawk? I got a mohawk. Happiness security minute. All your employers out there. Listen, I go all around town and all your doors are unlocked, and bad guys can just walk in. So I got an idea for happiness. Put some access control on those doors. Keep your employees a little safer. A little safe for you. If you're in retail, understand. If you're not in retail, your front door really shouldn't be open to the public. Give it a thought. Keep your employees happy. Keep them safe. That's my security minute. All right, awesome. So we're here with Heather. Yeah, we're all about happiness today. I can't see Heather without the Scottish accent. Heather Patterson. We're here with this wee lass, and we're going to be tied. It's a great Scottish name, you know. It's really beautiful on the hills. That's awesome. Anyway, I've been accused of flirting with the guests and guess what? Nothing's changed. We got a tweet. So it says ask Heather which happiness skills are our hardest to teach? Which happiness skills are hardest to teach? What the heck is a happiness skill? Yeah, you've got to practice being happy. It's all about optimism and outlook and stuff. Yeah, optimism and outlook. How do you teach that? Yeah. I'm happy every day. Of course. How can you? Some people are not happy every day. Right. No, right. People actually have a happiness set point. Okay. Yeah. There is some biology that has to do with this and circumstances, but a lot of it we can change. Okay. And there's skills that we can do and habits that we can create that help us be happier. Like for example, practicing gratitude is a habit that we can incorporate into our days, our weeks. That will help us be happier. I don't teach that a whole lot. It comes up from time to time and I'll work with that with especially functioning teams and functioning people. It's like, oh, build a fence around the thing that's really good. Make sure that you're expressing gratitude. Yeah, well I like first, we're first to complain and last to compliment. Yeah. All the time. No, and that's negativity bias. This is all science. Okay. This is science. No, right. And that's what makes it so exciting because people could sort of think like, oh, it's like, la, la, you know, like kind of airy fairy. Yeah. And it's just not, you know, there's research from Harvard and Stanford and Berkeley, all of these Ivy League schools going, this is a real thing and it can make a real difference in your workplace. Yeah. Connectivity, especially in IT because we and even people are just like you mentioned on their phones all the time. We're disconnecting. There's no real joy in any of that. There's none. It comes from people. Yeah. It comes from contact and we're craving it more and more. I think that's why I was I was watching this movie about the Spartan races and all those guys, right? And they're, they're saying they're all coming out in droves because they get to do something together on the weekend. Yeah. You know, because all week we're just getting further and further apart. Technology is kind of, yeah, I think, I think it's timely to be teaching happiness in the workplace. I really do. So to get back to the question now, the harness to teach, there's two that immediately come to mind. The first being empathy. Empathy not sympathy, not sympathy, empathy, empathy. And it's sort of like, you know what that is, or you don't. And trying to explain it can be a real challenge. I rely heavily on another researcher. Her name is Brené Brown to help me introduce this concept to people. There's a beautiful video that she has on YouTube that's animated and it makes it, it uses cartoons to help, you know, explain the concept. And so it depersonalizes it and go and you can, you can really see empathy for what it is. It's hard to take the time when someone's explaining some pain to try to get in that pain with them or get an enjoy with them or, you know, be there with them in that right? Be there with them. So it's difficult. Yeah, that can be really a challenge to teach, but it's critical for building relationships. So can you, you know, what a suggestion be the you know, when you first see me to get up in the morning and try to find something that's going to make you laugh at the beginning of the day? You know, maybe not listening to the bad news and just go or the no news or whatever it is, just find something to, I always wake up in the morning and look at how bizarre I look and laugh and then that's all I've been just next to go. But you know, just like, it's trying to find something that will just be a joke of the day or something. A joke of the day, a inspirational quote. I mean, there's a lot of work out there already about your morning ritual and that it should be something that feeds your, your body and your mind and your spirit, right? So yeah, whether it's, you know, being grateful, something funny, I would say stay away from social media and the news. Yeah, I mean, since I stopped watching mainstream news for the past two months, I've been the happiest in my entire life. Yeah, I see, I see. And everybody goes, have you heard about it? And I know I don't want to hear about it. This is impacting my life directly, you know, immediately. And let's me have some more fun with what's going on with the rest of this world. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm not a news watcher and I sometimes feel silly, you know, when I can't respond. But it's a way of protecting my happiness. But you don't put yourself in a false bubble. Bottle. Bottle? Bottle? Bottle. Yeah. Bottle. Let's check it up, Wikipedia. So let's, you know, you don't put yourself in a false bubble. You can't. Right. I know that there's terrible things happening out there. But how much I let that in and I dwell on it, it's very limited. So what are the kinds of things that organizations should be doing, but just contacting you obviously, but, you know, to move in this way. Right. To move in this way. So at the workplace level, because it is a little bit different from life to workplace, but in the same sense. So just building off of waking up in the morning. I mean, the equivalent of that at work is showing up to work. That's why I mentioned like say good morning, you know, or if you are starting a meeting, start the meeting with good news. Yep. You know, and it could be personal, it could be professional. But instead of just launching in, like, started with something positive or an inspirational quote. Okay. That's where Christine learned it. All of our meetings started with her advice to share something good news. So maybe no more rants at the beginning of the show. But maybe at the end. Or we could do positive rants. Okay. Okay. They cut the grass this week. If we could find them. Let's print something positive every two. Rant about. Yeah. Okay. It's probably not called a rant. We've got to find the potluck. A reverse of rant. Yeah. All anthem. Shout out. This is a shout out. Yeah. Okay. See, we're changing the theme of the show. I love that. Changing our culture. Yeah. For your very eyes. So tell us. We got a little bit of time. So, go ahead. I'll just talk about her events. So if you want to. I love the topic of this one. So on June 11, she's given a class about how to have a successful tough conversation. No. No. Think about it, who goes into a tough conversation, thinking about having to be successful? I love that concept. Yeah. Give us a bit, sell it a little. Thanks, thanks Andrew. Yeah, I'm going to be at Happiness University. That's with Alicey Noy down at Salt, Kaka Kaka. It's a one hour class, 1.30 to 2.30. And we're going to break down how to structure a tough conversation so that you come out on the other end feeling good. Is this like, we got to let you go this week It could be. Oh, I have some clients. I have some clients I would love to get them to go, but they won't move. Oh, that's my chance. Buy them a ticket. I'll buy them the tickets. I'll drive them and drop them off. And they still come up with a reason why they can't go. That's what drives me crazy. Right, so you have to be open. You have to be open, right? But you can share, you can, you know, that's one of the things about the weekly videos that I have is that's a nice way to say, like, oh, look at what I found and you share it. And you know, people will learn through osmosis a bit. But yeah, a lot of people don't realize some of the things that we work on to get happier are actually more challenging. It's getting through conflict, having the tough conversations sort of clearing. So that's what the talk on the 11th is all about. So it's about what, an hour and a half? An hour. An hour. An hour, we stick very much to schedule. What time? 1.30. So you can maybe take a late lunch? Absolutely. Yeah. I think it's on a Sunday or Monday. Sunday. It's on a Sunday. Sunday afternoon. It's easy. Go down to Salt and Coca-Cola and then go over down to one of each. You're going to have a more shopping center after that with a smile on your face and buy yourself a shirt. You know, whatever you need. Okus or bubble tea. There's so many cool little shops there anyway. Buy ties. Then there's that. There's that too. So, okay, so, go ahead. What else do you have going on? Let's see. I'm going to be speaking at the Professional Women's Network on Thursday the 22nd. And I'm also seeking one-on-one coaching of program participants. So I have a program where we collect feedback so they rate themselves and then the people around them at work rate them, give them feedback on leadership and happiness competencies. And then we work through their strengths and their weaknesses, their opportunities and help them grow and become more effective through the inside out. Now, do you have staff? Do you have an employee base? Or are you a sole proprietor? And you're the one person? Just me. Just me. I know. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah. It's being happy. No, it's definitely time to consider adding. You know, it's a lot to take on. Yeah, when you start housing the employees and all the burden of that, it becomes a whole other issue. But it's still great. You can 1099 them or double-nine them. Yeah. I see it made you happy. Yeah. Okay, so lots of clients in town? Lots of clients in town and ranging in all different industries. It's really been a lot of fun for me. That's one of the things that I love about my work is I get to, you know, real estate, a plumbing company, a hair salon, a mortgage, you know, it's just- Hair salon, careful. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Hair, they hate hair work out. I went to the barber today. You're not gonna believe me. It cost me $15.26. What for? I got my beard turned. Oh. Yeah. It was nice to meet you. You're just sharing all the happiness. It's been 25 years I haven't sat in a virus chair. So how do people find you? How do we know where to get ahold of you? Yeah, sure. Probably the best way is to go to my website. Okay. So, HappierTD as in talent development. HappierTD.com. Or touchdown. Or touchdown. Yeah. Talent development. I love it. HappierTD.com. Do you engage staff without ownership? Or do you kind of require that ownership buys in first? Because, you know, there's a lot of value in the leadership. Yeah. You know, it doesn't really work without them, right? Yeah. I mean, I haven't had to do it. But if I had a leader who was like, you fix them, I'm good. Yeah, right. I think I might say, you know, I'm not sure this is the right fit. Yeah. You know, that's really important to me. Yeah, I have one client that they're constantly laughing. I mean, they're just, you know, they're laughing at their mistakes. Yeah, oh, good. The beauties I love about is when they find things that are not going right or whatever, they start laughing and figure out ways to, you know, solve the tension. Yes. Then they start moving forward. And there's a woman that seems to be leading that all the time and getting everybody laughing. Oh, that's awesome. So it's really good. It's kind of interesting how some of the great organizations they start running into in town are led by women who seem to be better at this than a lot of the guys who just want to just fix it and just hit it with a bat. And that's it. And we have a different style. Yeah. That can be. I don't know why that is. But you just want to, I think, I mean, I'm no gender expert. But I think you'd just incline to just fix it instead of explore it and get moving. The hunter-gatherer is getting over with, and we're going to move on. Speaking of that, we've burned up 28 minutes already. So we've got to continue this conversation. It's very cool. Oh, yeah. Heather at happiertd.com. That's right. Happy SU. I love it. This is a great university. And your website is excellent. So I went and checked it out today. Oh, thank you. And thanks for accepting my poke or whatever it was on the poke. Whatever I did out at LinkedIn this week. Oh, OK. All right. Yeah. That was cranky. Yes. Oh, anyway. So no guest goes unrewarded. You get our happy cup, a solo cup. That is the happiest cup in the world. 119 in the series. So don't ever lose that puppy. So anyway, it's like we stay at the end of every show. And this is how we usually close them out, one, two, three. How are you doing?