#34 Why Strong-Willed Kids Make Great Entrepreneurs with Kirk Martin of Celebrate Calm
// Kirk Martin is the founder of Celebrate Calm and he has taught over 600,000 parents and teachers around the world to stop defiance, yelling, and power struggles with strong-willed children. Now, I don’t know about you but when somebody wants to have an influence in the world as a leader, I think that a lot of leaders raised these strong-willed children. So we’re going to really benefit from his practical strategies. They are life-changing and laugh-out-loud funny.
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Transcript
Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. And today, I have Kirk Martin on the line.
Andrea: So thank you so much for being with us today, Kirk!
Kirk Martin: I’m excited to be here, Andrea, thanks for having me.
Andrea: Well, Kirk, we have actually purchased a number of his CD’s where he gives really practical advice about raising strong-willed kids and those things were so hopeful to us and we ended up even having a phone call with him and consulting with him in our own parenting. So I can’t even begin to tell you how impactful Kirk is in the lives of parents and kids.
So, Kirk, I would love for you to share with the audience, like how did you get started with Celebrate Calm? What was the initiating factor, like what was the origin story?
Kirk Martin: You know, I wasn’t looking for this as probably most people find out in their second careers. I was a corporate business guy and my son, Casey, was struggling in school and he kept actually getting kicked out of schools. So I would go and I volunteer time in his classroom and what I discovered was, I was really good at working with the kids who were alternative learners, who kind of had different learning styles. So I started reading and reading and reading and all about different ways to help these kids and so there was a little bit of a professional transformation as far as learning.
Anyway, I was in his classroom and teachers kept saying “Hey, Mr. Martin, are you gonna come back tomorrow?” And I was like “I have a fulltime job; I can’t come to your class every day.” But I was finding that the little strategies I was coming up with my son were working with other kids. So that was one part of it and then there was personal transformation of realizing, because I always thought that my son was the problem because he was just difficult and obstinate and he just wouldn’t do what I wanted him to do.
I used to spend all of my time trying to change him until I finally realized, I was the one who needed to change, so there’s this whole transformation. And so I was still working a fulltime job and I had an idea that I wanted to work with these kids because these kinds of kids are often labeled…they’re very misunderstood and we often take them to therapy which is fine, but I wanted to have kids in my home.
We actually invited kids. We’d have 8, 10, to 15 kids in our house so I could teach them how to control their emotions and their impulses. Honestly, it started with a passion just for helping kids and I got fired from another job which was kind of my pattern. I remember calling my wife and saying “Hey, guess what, we could work fulltime with the kids now because I don’t have a job.” And I liked it because I was like “Sure, no adventure but wives for some reason really like stability.” She wasn’t a huge fan over the first but anyway it was really, as I guess most of your listeners will find, it was born out of passion more than kind of like a calculated “I’m going to set out to do this.”
Andrea: How did you let people know that you were doing it? Did you just spread it by word of mouth? How did people know?
Kirk Martin: When we started to do these camps, the idea was to have kids in my home where I could control the environment, right? So I want a place where kids felt comfortable so we’d have Legos all over the floor. Most of the kids would come in and right away they’re like “Oh there’s Legos, I feel at home.” It was almost like a version of play therapy in that sense where the kids didn’t know we were working on their behaviors. They were just coming to have fun; I call it a “venture camp, Lego camp.”
We lived in a little subdivision and they had a little community newspaper. I remember very distinctly, it cost me $6. I put a little ad and it said, ADHD Camps and it said “Build confidence and social skills,” and I had my phone number and email address. I told my wife, I was like “Nobody is gonna call. It’s not a big deal,” and we started getting calls and I was like “Oh man, what are we gonna do? Like I don’t really _____ now I have to do it?” So I went online and through a little internet website company, I built my own website one night for $9.99 and I just started replying calls from people and emails saying “Oh yeah, well here’s what we do with the camps.”
Honestly, I was just swinging it and people started showing up at my house and I was like “What am I gonna charge them?” I hate to sound like this but I didn’t have like a well thought out, I just know that if I jump in and started doing it, which is the way that I do things, it would work out and I would figure it out as I went along. I know there are some people who don’t work that way and they will over think it and wait and get like 18 different degrees and certification. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s not just my thing. I wanted to jump in.
So one Saturday morning, we ended up having seven kids come to my house; I’m like “OK, so let’s start doing this.” So then after that, it was such a unique concept that no one else was doing that word of mouth spread of like “Oh my son is going on Saturday morning _____ house, he’s teaching him on impulse control and controlling his emotions and this week, we noticed a difference in him.” And the funny thing is in the second summer, because I would do this thing on Saturday morning and then I started doing on Tuesday evenings, so I said “Dinner camps bring your kids, I’m going to eat dinner with them and teach them all kinds of stuff while we’re eating dinner and playing afterwards,” and it was Thursday night.
In the summer, I would take my vacation from my regular job and do weeklong camps. And the second summer, we have kids flying in from Europe and I have kids flying in from all over the country. I didn’t have any qualifications to speak of except that I really get the kids and what I was doing was working so hopefully that doesn’t work by too many people.
Andrea: No, I think that’s really fascinating because you had a solution to a very real and practical problem and it was working. That is the heart of entrepreneurship I think.
Kirk Martin: Right. It’s finding a real need that people had and then a creative solution and part of it was being true to myself because in early days, I fought against “Oh, I don’t have my masters. I don’t have my PhD.” And people were like “Oh do you have masters in psychology or education?” I was like “Nope, international business,” there you go and so I used to be really defensive, you know, as you would expect. But what I found was, I just had to be true to myself and not do things the way everybody else did it because that never works for me.
If you ever come to one of our live events, you will find my speaking style, you would either love it or you’ll absolutely hate it. But I remember going to a Toastmasters to learn how to talk and speak publicly and what I found was it’s _____. Every single person in there spoke the same way and I do the wrong things. I speak really fast and I don’t give breaks for people to process information. And people try to change me for a long time and what I realized was, people like what we do because I’m very authentic even if sometimes it’s a little bit odd and weird.
Andrea: Yeah! I think that’s absolutely true for you and for probably for everybody. Did you know that about yourself? You said you were kind of defensive at first when people would question you, but did you just know that about yourself or did you just feel like “There’s no other way, I just have to be this way. It’s just the way it is.” How did you figure it out?
Kirk Martin: You know when you jump in, you just have to go for it and you just have to say, “OK, I know I can’t answer…” Some people you won’t satisfy because they want to know, you have those qualifications and it’s determining who you are and who you want to help and knowing you can’t please everyone and focusing on your strengths instead of trying _____ the weaknesses. One of my early decisions was, I could go back to school and I could go get my masters, but I kept thinking, I’m not sure I’m actually going to learn that much from books.
So what I decided was instead of spending that time in a college classroom just getting a degree to say I had a degree, I begin volunteering my time in different classrooms in schools literally all across the country. And I just contact them and say “You don’t have to pay me but I’d love to come and observe the classroom.” And I would give the teachers some written ideas when I leave about how she can help or he can help. So I always tell people instead of spending time in a classroom and getting masters degree, I spend time in literally hundreds of classrooms getting that very practical experience and stories.
Now, I can’t quantify this but I believe I trained more teachers across the country than anyone else and they’re all more qualified. I don’t have master’s degree or PhD and yet they love it because they can tell I’ve actually been in classrooms.
Andrea: That makes a huge difference knowing that someone has actual real life experience. I’m not against degrees by any means but whoever you are influencer listening, whoever you are and whatever you’re like, listen to this because this is really empowering I think for any of us. And it’s also really important I think your comments, Kirk, about getting into it and when you’re in it then you have to figure it out and taking action. It’s risky to do that but at the same time, if you really care about it, which it sounds like you really cared about it, you just go for it.
Kirk Martin: That’s my personal style, jump in, figuring out. Now, my wife is completely opposite. So she has gotten her master’s degree in social work and counseling but that’s who she is, right? So part of it is knowing who you are and what your risk tolerance is. I had back then a very high risk tolerance. Look, part of this is your personality. I like being different and I don’t want to do things the way other people do it. In fact, one of my weaknesses, and I’ll share this, people always tell me “Oh, you need to check out this guy’s stuff. You need to check out this lady’s stuff. They’re really good. They’re in the same field.”
A lot of times, I will not look at their stuff. Now, I do sometimes because I can learn and I’ll still some of their best ideas which is part of all of this just learning from other people. But what I get really afraid of is I’ll see someone else and think “Oh, I need to do what they’re doing.” And I’m really cautious about that because it has never worked for me when I try to do things the way other people do it. I have to be really authentic and I have to just do what’s right for my kind of learning and teaching style.
Andrea: I personally can really relate to that into your desire to be different and not even the desire, it’s almost like you can’t help it. There’s no way that you’re going to be able to go down the path that everybody else goes down. Yeah, I feel that way too and I think that I actually can relate too. I don’t know if it’s the same thing but I also feel like I can’t fill my mind with other voices because I wouldn’t be able to hear my own. Do you ever feel that way?
Kirk Martin: Yes and I’ve struggled with that honestly because I know I’m continually learning. I read a lot about brain science. I read a lot of brain psychology but I try not to work too much at other people in what they’re doing. I try to learn from them but I’m afraid of getting sucked in to that comparison thing of like “Oh, they do so much better. They’re doing this.” There’s some of it which I think which I think you identified is knowing what your voice is and what your unique message is.
I think we’ve been able to sustain this and grow this for a long time partly because I’ve stuck to what you’ve just said is. I know who I am, I know my voice, I know the people I want to help and I can help, and I do that really, really well but I try to keep things very simple. We fail a lot so we try a lot of ideas. And again, this is probably a different question but it plays to be an entrepreneur. We try things but if we notice right away it’s not working, we move out of it very quickly so that’s part of learning to be yourself and not try to do what other people are doing.
Andrea: That’s awesome! OK, I want to get in to what you teach a little bit too. But before that, I know you have talked so much about you and Casey (Casey is your son), you’ve both been so open about the struggles that you each faced. So my question for you is did you always include personal stories about Casey? And what did he initially think when you started doing that and how did that come about?
Kirk Martin: Hmmm, good question. I think I started with personal stories about myself and my own transformation. You know, part of it was my dad who was military. So I grew up with kind of like the “My way or the highway, who’s gonna do what I’m tell you to do?” So it began with me being vulnerable about my own issues and that continues to this day and I think again that’s one of the things that people like is I’m not a professional in a lab coat telling them what I read about theory. They’re relating to a real parent, not just a dad, but a parent who gets to really irritated when kids don’t do something, and who struggles with issues.
Again, that’s just me. I’m a pretty vulnerable person. I don’t know that I’m anymore secured than anyone else but it’s who I am and I found that people really like those stories. And you know, I would ask Casey in early days, I’m like “Are you OK, if I share this?” And he was like “Sure, dad. It’s fine.” He grew up with this so when we started having kids over to the house; he was a little kids still. You know, kids come over to the house on Saturday morning and he’d be sleeping and kids would run upstairs because they were in a house and it wasn’t a big house.
It’s a little townhouse. They would run up to his bedroom and wake him up and he’d be like “Dad, it’s Saturday. Come on, I’m a teenage, why these little kids? Why all these stupid kids in my room?” And I didn’t mean it like him calling them stupid but of course he thought that. But overtime, he actually started working in the camps partly because he was free labor, but also because it was a family mission, right? They were coming into our home and so he learned all of this firsthand from working with different kids.
When he started going out on the road speaking with me, I think he just followed my lead and started being open about his own struggles. It was just kind of a natural evolution of the way things worked but nothing was really calculated. Whenever I tried to calculate things or really try to like “OK, here’s an opportunity, we need to exploit.” It never really works when I do that. It only works if it’s kind of a natural evolution of who we are as people and our experience.
Andrea: I love that idea of following the experience and letting it play out but at the same time, it’s hard to do. And I think, again, this going to go back again just being able to listen to that inside of you and know when it’s time to do what. I think often we get very confused and we get, I don’t know, like our mind gets clouded. I love that.
Kirk Martin: No, I’ll add this. You know, you run down a little path and eventually find out “OK that’s not working, that’s not me.” So you don’t always have to have a clear answer. It makes a little bit of faith in this; I mean my relationship with God is really important to me. So I ask but I don’t really hear like “Hey, Kirk, here’s what you’re supposed to do tomorrow,” like I don’t hear audible voices. Sometimes, I just run with stuff and then I figure out pretty quickly “OK, there’s nothing there. It’s not resonating with people. It’s not resonating with me.”
I’ve been doing this a long time now so it’s easier to deal with the uncertainty of knowing. There’s still doubt within the past two years. I’ve had times where “Why isn’t anybody asking us to come speak?” I’m 51, like in your 50s it’s like your prime years of influence. I’m really good at what I do. I’m in the most confident I’ve ever been and yet sometimes you go through this dry spells and was like “Doesn’t anybody love me anymore, doesn’t anybody wants me to come speak?” You always have the self doubt and then you just keep plugging on, plugging on, you know going on and then all of a sudden now you get invited too much and you’re like “I’m tired of travelling.” So I think it just comes with the nature of being an entrepreneur.
Andrea: I know that you’ve mentioned before that entrepreneurship can be good for strong-willed kids. What is the connection that you see between being a strong-willed kid and the experience that you’ve had as an entrepreneur?
Kirk Martin: Uh, do you have all day? It’s funny because I think I came up with this idea in between you asked me to be on here. But we’re going to revive those camps again and start doing some entrepreneur camps for kids. It’s not wanting to follow the normal path, right? It’s a strong-willed child who is contrarian and kind of oppositional by nature. If you ask them to do something, their first question is “why?” Because they want to figure out a different way, they want to figure out context. They’re not afraid to break the rules a little bit. They are curious. I think they’re risk takers by nature a little bit because they kind of don’t mind not fitting in. They almost like being a little bit, I don’t know, weird.
I have an aversion to anything that’s really popular in pop culture. I will not participate in, even if it’s really cool. I just don’t like it. I don’t like it when everybody else is doing something. I intentionally would not see that movie and it’s because I’m a jerk, although I’m a jerk by nature, a little bit sarcastic, but I like my own path. They often don’t follow social conventions and this is really interesting because they often have an attitude of like “Well, who cares that you don’t do it that way?” And I think in my own experience “I’m not qualified.” I don’t think it’s arrogance, I hope not, because I try to be a humble person but there is a certain amount of like “OK, so I’m not qualified, so what? I think I can do.”
So it’s this borderline like arrogance, but also I found most of these kids also have a great deal of humility and they have big hearts, the ability to hyper focus. So these are kids who if they’re not interested in school work, something that should take 15 minutes, will drag out and take three hours. But if they’re interested in their video games or Legos, they can play for literally hours at a time.
I think in many ways, the way that their brains are wired and the way their personalities are formed just make some very uniquely position to become entrepreneurs. Honestly that’s one of the new big focuses that we’re going to have is instead of joining camps where I’m working on kids behavior and trying to fix the negatives, I wanted to switch and accentuate the gifts, accentuate the strengths that they have and then show them how to use it. All of these qualities make them very difficult to teach and it makes it difficult for them to succeed in school, but ironically it’s the very qualities that make them uniquely qualified or positions to do really well _____ dynamic.
Andrea: OK, so how are you going about this? I’m curious because I have a kid that I think would be a great fit for this kind of a thing. I’m curious, what’s your plan, is it your Saturday camps or is it a weeklong thing? Tell us about the structure of it?
Kirk Martin: Well, this is in the formation, so it’s a little bit odd to be sharing this. I’m not doing it to do like a little commercial for our thing but hopefully it’s interesting for people.
Andrea: I’m curious.
Kirk Martin: I’m curious too to see how it unfolds to be honest because I’ve wanted to do this. I recently read a newsletter that I wrote in 1999, and in it, I mentioned that one day I would like to have a school of entrepreneurship for the kids who don’t fit into the school system and who fall through the cracks. And so for years, everybody was like “When do you starting that school?” I’m not a great process kind of person, so there’s no way I would ever start like a charter school. I don’t do bureaucracy; I’m not doing all of that.
So I kind of let it go and I just read that and I was like “Now, it’s 18 years later and this is coming because in my own personal life where I live, I mentor kids.” I met a kid at a Chic-Fil-A once and I stopped in there to do a little bit of work before I had to do this speaking thing. I saw this kid and I watched them and I listened the way he was speaking to customers. So when there’s a break, I went up and I said “You’re gonna own your own business one day, aren’t you? He was only 17, and he was like “Yes sir, that’s my goal.”
And I said “Oh you’re gonna do it. If I could invest in you right now. Here’s what I see, you’re gonna start your own business. You’re gonna fail at the first one or two just because you’re young and that’s what you need to do. But eventually, you’re going to learn from your failure and you’re going to hit it big. So if I could invest in you like I invest in a stock, I would put a lot of money into you.” I got to meet his parents.
So I started mentoring kids because I’m not good at a lot of things but I’m really good at seeing inside of kids and what they’re capable of. So initial idea that we’re going to kick off is doing some boot camps during the school year with their weekends. So the kids come for Saturday and a Sunday. We’re not going to sit in a classroom. I already have locations scouted where we can do hiking trails and so we can get out and learn nature because these kids don’t like sitting at classrooms and we’re going to meet with local entrepreneurs.
So a lot of cool areas now where you can stay in a hotel that is near walking trails and also like in a little square where there are all these businesses. I want them to meet other entrepreneurs to get a sense of, to feel the passion and what drives them and to see how hard it is to do with. So it’s going to be very experiential and then we’re going to have some diagnostic to identify their gifts talents and passions.
And then honestly, I want kids around each other _____ kids to get together and I want to come up with an action plan. So each of these kids leaves each weekend with “Hey, I’ve got three or four ideas of ways to make money, to do service projects to internships. My son will be teaching them to qualities of successful people and a lot of great books. If you’ve ever read the Millionaire Next Door, it talks about the essential qualities of a millionaire. It’s not really about the money; it’s about the qualities that they have.
Initially, we’re going to do this little weekend boot camp in different parts of the country. And part of it will me training the parents, because when you have a child like this you have to make some really courageous decisions, whether you’re going to try to _____ him into the current school system or whether you’re going to say “Maybe we have to do this a different way because this child is so different.” And then eventually we’ll get into doing longer summer camps.
Honestly, I’m about to announce it probably within the next week or so. It’s kind of cool and it’s really exciting.
Andrea: It super exciting. I love it and I’m so excited for you. So one of the things that I’ve heard you talk about that really resonated with me is the idea of transferring our anxiety onto our kids that definitely resonated with me because a few years ago, I was really struggling with the anxiety and I saw how I was doing that. It just made so sense to me and I hated that. So would you share with us what that concepts means and I think it applies to any relationships whether it’s kids or spouses or people you work with or whatever. So what does it mean to transferring anxiety?
Kirk Martin: I’ll take it as a parent. You look at your child and for most of us especially who have strong-willed kids who aren’t living up to their potential, right? Because you look at this child and you think she’s so bright, she’s so capable, and yet she’s not applying yourself. She’s capable so much more. She’s not living up to her potential and so we get anxiety because we begin to think how will she be able to be successful in life? What’s going to happen? You know, you can take it deeper of like “What’s wrong with me as a parent? Am I doing something wrong? Why is it my child is working harder, what is wrong?
And so all of these anxieties about our child’s future, about our own job as a parent and now we begin to dump that on the child and start to lecture them and we begin to micromanage them. I think people identify with this, the more that you care about something as a parent, the less your kids do and the more they resist. I believe as a parent my number one enemy is my own anxiety over my child’s future because it causes me to literally micromanage their lives for them and get on them so much.
It is anxiety because I don’t know what to do with you and it fills all out of my control. I need you to step up and start caring more about your school because I care about your school and I need you to do well at school. So you’ll be successful so I’ll feel good as a parent like I’ve done a good job and you can feel that weight. And that weight is too cumbersome for me to bear as a parent, because I can’t be responsible for the happiness or success of another human being. I can’t carry that and then when you sense all of that weight of our expectations is now being born by a 7 year old, a 10 year old, or a 15 year old, it’s too much for them to bear and that’s what causes the power struggles. I don’t know if I explained that well.
Andrea: Yeah. I don’t know. I can see how what you’re saying is that they fight back on that. They push back on that especially the strong-willed kids.
Kirk Martin: Well, they need to own it. They want to own their choices and their decisions and they want to do it their way, which is a good thing, right? It’s a good thing; it’s just a very difficult thing. It’s a really hard process.
Andrea: I know you go into such great detail about this with the resources that you have available which will definitely make sure that influencer listening will be able to find this on the show notes. But yeah, they push back and I’ve seen it myself that I am more or less just sort of not worried so much that I let them be who they are, that I let them make their mistakes and let them sense and feel their failures that I don’t have to carry that weight for them either. That it’s OK for them to feel those things and then I can pull back a little bit more and they can make more of their own decisions on it. Definitely, it seems to be going generally better.
Kirk Martin: You know, one great _____, Andrea, for me is as a respect issue. So one of our phrases is when we step back as parents, it gives kids space to step up and be responsible for themselves. So the way I look as respect of “I’m going to step back because I respect you enough to believe you’re capable of handling this yourself.” It’s just a great phrase to tell anybody.
Andrea: Would you just say it again because that was so good.
Kirk Martin: I respect you enough to believe that you’re capable of handling this yourself and then you have to walk away from it and let them touch the hot stove and feel and figure it out. Because one of the beautiful parts of that is you’re respecting them as a person, you’re giving them some space to fail and to know it’s OK to struggle. To me there’s a dignity issue.
There are two different ways; “I’m going to ride you and remind you and lecture you and micromanage you because I’m going to make sure that you’re successful, but I’m going to make sure you do it my way because my way is always the right way,” and it never work to a strong-willed child, versus saying “You’re smart, you’re capable, you’re independent, and I know you can handle this on your own and I trust you to learn from the inevitable failures that you make and I’m giving you the dignity of learning this. The dignity of having that satisfaction of knowing I’ve overcome struggles, I’ve overcome challenges and I’ve been successful.”
When we micromanage our kids, we really rob them of that satisfaction because in essence what they’re saying is “Mom, you kind of made me successful. You did this for me.” It’s just really hard as a parent to watch your child struggle and fail but if they’re going to be entrepreneurs, it’s a key part. This business is only successful because I failed really badly, wildly at my previous business kind of self-employed business venture that I did. I owe the success of this to the previous failure and I think that’s how a lot of our kids and a lot of us learn best.
Andrea: OK, now we are in the midst of the holiday bliss, right? It can be the most stressful of the year with all of the pressure that we have to delight our kids, to delight other people, make the season magical, at least that’s how I feel; I definitely want that for my kids. But then there’s also the pressure that can come with all the family expectations and gatherings and if you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve got the end of the year stuff going on too. So what would you say, Kirk, to the influencer listening who really wants to stay calm over these holidays and actually enjoy it but they’re finding themselves caught up in this pressure? What kind of advice do you have for them as they relate to their kids, spouse or colleagues, or even an audience?
Kirk Martin: I just jotted down three things quickly. Taking care of yourself first and not worrying, because I’m like you, I love kind of like the whole magical thing and I want to be there’s snow in places even now I live on the coast of North Carolina and it’s never going to happen. You want that whole romantic idea of like “Oh, it’s gonna be a wonderful Christmas.” Probably this is for anytime of the year is taking care of myself first and not worrying about trying to make other people happy. I don’t mean that a selfish way, it just means I can’t carry that load.
So if I want people to be happy during the holiday season then I’m going to be happy and I live with joy and I notice the little things and I’m excited by the simplicity of it and the beauty of it and that tends to rob of on people. It’s when we try to get them to enjoy it. You just need to be grateful because you have so much, right? When they don’t react the way we want them to then we get upset at them. You know what, it’s like when you take your kids to Disney, “You guys are going to have a good time at Disney World whether you like it or not.” You know what I mean, all this expectation so much of what we talked about. It’s about controlling myself and not other people.
And so controlling about my own expectations, I’m simplifying. Choose what’s really important during the holidays to you and then you’re just going to have to really focus and say “We’re not going to every party, we’re not going to every single event.” Choose the ones that’s right for your family. Those of us who have strong-willed kids and very emotional kids and get overwhelmed very easily and they can’t do it all. It’s just way too much.
I’d set expectations even before the holidays as much as you can of like what are the three things that are most important for us to enjoy Christmas and the holidays? What are those things? Let’s make sure we do those three things really well and the other things we’ll just say no to. You know what just hit me, just think how great modeling that is for your kids to know you can’t do everything, you can’t please everyone else. You know, learning to be assertive and saying “Hey family member, hey friend I know you invited us to this Christmas party, we really appreciate that and your friendship is really important to us; however, what’s best for our family right now is we need a couple of nights at home.” That’s hard to do, right?
Andrea: Yeah.
Kirk Martin: But that’s being assertive and honest and otherwise “It’s OK kids, we got to go at your Aunt Marge, we have to show up.” And there’s certain amount of that, right that in life you have to do things you don’t want to do. But when you’re doing that continually and you’re exhausted, you end up being resentful at everyone. So I love being able to model being gracious in saying no to people, because I remember my son when he was little, he just couldn’t do it being around a lot of people. And you know how it is there’s always bad food, there’s always a lot of Christmas cookies and so you have a tired kid and he’s hopped up on all the sugar and it’s just didn’t work. And even to this day as an entrepreneur, you have to simplify “No, this is what we’re good at doing. This is what we’re not good at doing and so we’re gonna focus on the main thing.”
Andrea: Such a great information and advice that you have for us today. Thank you so much, Kirk, for your time and you’re doing really good work in the world. So I thank you for your voice of influence.
Kirk Martin: Oh well, thank you for doing what you’re doing in helping other people. I’m glad to help anytime I can.
Andrea: Awesome!
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