Unemployable, Not Unhireable

Cara Steinmann (00:46.178)
Well we'll find out if know Riverside, might be on your last leg today. We'll see.

Kevin Mooney (00:50.275)
You, I was saying that in the first episode and I was like, actually maybe I want you as a sponsor. Will you sponsor me? Yeah. Yeah. How's everything going? Like, this is not like a stupid intro. Like, Hey, how's life going? But since, since we last talked, like we were going off into outer space.

Cara Steinmann (00:56.782)
We'll see. We'll see how you do.

Cara Steinmann (01:07.286)
No, I know we're not doing that. That's stupid. I hate that.

Cara Steinmann (01:13.996)
I know, we talked about everything from like politics to golf, I think.

Kevin Mooney (01:18.391)
Yeah, yeah, the patriarchy. What were we ending with? It was getting, it was getting spicy.

Cara Steinmann (01:21.709)
Yep.

Cara Steinmann (01:27.074)
I don't know, we were on fire about something.

I don't remember, we'll get there eventually. I know this is exactly why we were talking about at the end of our phone call last week, we were talking about how we need to figure out how to just record the phone calls that we have that are interesting. And I lose so much, so much good content when I'm talking to somebody on the phone and then you've already said it.

Kevin Mooney (01:32.155)
See, this is exactly why, yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:49.189)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was, was really fun to do the show with, with Peter. He, was Wednesday. And so he, he kind of did this thing that people do and I'm trying not to do in this format of, so for those of you that don't know, Kevin and I used to be business partners and we used to do this. And let me actually back up and give you the pre context to the context so that everybody knows.

Cara Steinmann (01:54.508)
When was that?

Kevin Mooney (02:19.732)
And I just rolled with it. but it was. Yeah. Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (02:22.638)
I mean, you kind of have to do that sometimes, because like, especially if you've known somebody for a long time, you'll start talking. Like Melissa and I had, for those of you who don't know, Kevin and I have a mutual friend named Melissa who actually introduced us like 10 years ago. So you and I had known each other for 10 years because of Melissa. Well, Melissa and I had a podcast called the Glow Well podcast, and it was like a wellness podcast, but we actually know each other so well. We've known each other for 30 years.

Kevin Mooney (02:37.316)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (02:47.532)
And so we would start joking and like inside jokes would slip out and then we'd be like, well, nobody's going to get that. Actually. That's kind of actually kind of rude.

Kevin Mooney (02:55.779)
Is it though, or is it part of the exploration, the character development? Right? You're sitting here talking about this name, this name, this name, and this name, and nobody knows who those people are. And then 200 episodes in, that person comes in and they make some weird connection to something they listened to two years ago. that's that one guy that they were talking about, or one gal.

Cara Steinmann (02:57.154)
I don't know.

Cara Steinmann (03:20.96)
If they've hung on for 200 episodes, if they didn't get pissed off because they didn't know what was going on, I don't know. I mean, we'll have to just take a poll. People, people listening, dear listeners, dear listeners, let Kevin know if you want to know the backstory or if you want to just like kind of figure it out as you go along. think people, it's probably probably half and half. Some people are OK. I think some people are OK with mystery and some people.

Kevin Mooney (03:25.829)
Sure.

Kevin Mooney (03:31.237)
Dear listeners,

Kevin Mooney (03:41.499)
They should have some say, right? That's what you're saying.

Cara Steinmann (03:47.956)
need to know. Like I'm the person who's sitting there watching a movie and annoying my husband because I recognize that actor and I've got to know who it is and what else he was in and pretty soon I've missed half the movie because I know I'm on IMDB or whatever it is. Google in the other 34 movies he's been in like did you see Jeremy this was him for those of you don't know Jeremy's my husband.

Kevin Mooney (03:58.287)
Googling.

Kevin Mooney (04:09.349)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (04:09.932)
You know you can't have me on here now without me saying, for those of you who don't know, now I have to.

Kevin Mooney (04:13.243)
I I think it's just the running joke. You have to do it. Yeah. It just reminds me of Cass, my son, right? We're in the movie and it just began and he's like, why are they doing that? Who are these people? Like the movie hasn't even started yet. Yeah, nine year old.

Cara Steinmann (04:30.328)
Wait, you have a son?

right. Okay, your wife had, okay, stepset. Okay. Well, yeah, of course you do. Yeah, absolutely. I just, I just forgot. And you and I don't talk about kids very often. But yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Mooney (04:35.387)
Yeah. I call him my son because I've been his dad for half of his life at this point in time. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, now that I have two kids, it's like all I talk about, which is a whole new area of life that I have never explored before. I was just always the guy that didn't, I don't know, didn't do family and kids.

Cara Steinmann (05:03.79)
So if his name is Cass, so Cass is the age that my son Parker was when we met, when you and I became friends. And you used to send him all the scooter stuff and he was like, that guy's so cool. He like, you were a big influence on him because of the scooter stuff.

Kevin Mooney (05:08.463)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (05:21.371)
It is, it's wild though.

Kevin Mooney (05:27.951)
It's just kind of wild though because he was just a little kid in the background during summertime coming in on our calls and being like, I'm bored. I don't know what to do. You're like, go ride a bike. Be a kid.

Cara Steinmann (05:43.39)
do something, I don't know. Well, it's hard working, working in the summer, like working from home with your kid, you think it's going to be really convenient. But honestly, it's like, as every parent found out during COVID, it's not easy to work at home with your kids. It's almost worse because you're just actively ignoring them all the time.

Kevin Mooney (06:03.695)
Yeah, I think about that a lot. Cass, being nine, he's into YouTube and Minecraft and Roblox and all of those things. And it's a little bit easy to just be like, go play video games, go watch YouTube. I'm probably more of the person in the relationship who's like, stop, get outside, go do something.

Cara Steinmann (06:12.408)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (06:21.335)
Nah.

Cara Steinmann (06:24.919)
It's tricky.

Kevin Mooney (06:34.361)
I don't know, maybe I don't like that about myself, but the reality is, like, it's a real fricking thing and I can't stand it.

Cara Steinmann (06:36.151)
I would say.

Cara Steinmann (06:41.154)
I know, Jeremy's the same way. We never let Parker have video games growing up. Like he had an iPad and he played Minecraft and Roblox. And it used to drive us crazy when he'd watch people play games. Like there was this one YouTuber named Cupquake and she had blue hair and I just, all I would just hear her voice in the background playing Minecraft all the time. And he'd just watch her play it. And I was like, this is the stupidest shit I've ever seen in my life. But I'm definitely the less strict of the two of us, of me and Jeremy, because.

Kevin Mooney (07:03.579)
That's exactly what I say.

Cara Steinmann (07:09.602)
We'll be at home, me and Parker will be rotting on the couch with our phones, even now. And I'll be like, shit, dad's almost home. Get up and look productive. Like both of us. I'm like, I gotta run outside and water the plants and look like I'm doing something other than rotting on the couch right now.

Kevin Mooney (07:16.463)
Get up. that's great.

Kevin Mooney (07:24.763)
Yeah, I'm guilty of that too, but I don't know. Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (07:30.36)
speaking of which, I've been seeing this, this is totally random sidebar, but do you and your wife share locations? Like, do you stalk each other on Find My Friends? Okay, I've seen a couple of like TikToks about this lately where people are like, no, that's such an invasion or whatever. And I'm like, what? I absolutely, like, I love that Jeremy knows where I am all the time. And that I can see when he's, when he leaves, like when he goes to ride his mountain bike and I can see that he's like on his way home, I'm like, cool.

Kevin Mooney (07:40.1)
Yes.

Kevin Mooney (07:52.549)
Really?

Cara Steinmann (07:58.19)
I'm sure he's gonna be starving. I'm hungry. I'll get some food going now so that everybody can eat when he gets home. He'll be home in 20 minutes. And then he doesn't have to call me and be like, I'm on my way home.

Kevin Mooney (08:07.707)
I think it's fucking weird. I have a new perspective on it now with a wife and a family, and then we have our au pair as well. I don't know if you knew about, we have an au pair. I didn't even know what an au pair was. Yeah, I almost said something really weird. We ordered her from Germany, No, so the.

Cara Steinmann (08:09.964)
I love it.

Cara Steinmann (08:16.088)
Kids too, yeah.

You have an au pair? That's so sophisticated. my God, look at you. Kevin.

Stop.

Cara Steinmann (08:34.86)
I'll pretend you didn't say that.

Kevin Mooney (08:36.569)
Yes, I know I'm going to pretend I didn't say either, but I just did. everybody gets there.

Cara Steinmann (08:40.066)
You actually have a German au pair. That is so cool. She's strict.

Kevin Mooney (08:43.203)
Yeah, we... No. I was hoping for some like Mary Poppins shit that was just like, you know, spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, go brush your teeth, get your ass in bed, like, but we're gonna go have fun during the day. It's not like that. I am not at all bashing R.O. but I'll just tell you the process of what it was like. So I didn't even know what an au pair was. My wife was all about...

of research in that. And she had talked to some people, she found this company called Cultural Care. And it's like, it's kind of like Tinder or Bumble or Hinge where you're kind of like swiping for people minus the swiping. The platform is really old and gross and terrible. It looks kind of like Facebook V1 or MySpace or something like that. But the point is you go through all these profiles.

and you can look at them, can read about them, and they have these little videos that say why they want to become an au pair, why they'd be a good fit for your family. And basically, you can choose up to three, something like that, and say, I like these people. They can review our profile, see if they like us, and if they want to match. Then we have a few conversations. Based on those conversations, we decide to move forward. But essentially, the cultural care company

puts all of this together. sponsor the, I forget the name of the visa. They sponsor the visa for the person to come over. They collect a fee and then they, the au pair now has somebody that they can reach out to if they need anything. So we went through, we found a couple. I brought in like the whole personality type thing into this, into the choice of this.

Cara Steinmann (10:29.282)
Yeah, that's cool.

Kevin Mooney (10:40.591)
So I was like, we don't want an extrovert. We don't want somebody that wants to just come here to party and experience American culture. We're looking for somebody to integrate in our family, take care of our kids, help out around the house. And so we found the person that we have right now. And I think we talked once or maybe twice. And it was just like, it was a great fit. And we're like, hey, you're the one. She's like, great, you're the one. And she flew out.

in June of 24 and she stayed with us for a year and then we chose to resign for another six months so we extended and she's now with us until December of this year. so having the au pair getting back to the find my friends thing, I didn't realize that the that was really a thing amongst people.

would allow me to see her location. I didn't share mine and we kind of liked it like that for like a minute because she was saying, I like that you know where I'm at. You can find me whatever, whatever. And then she was like, I kind of like not knowing where you're at. But I mean, it wasn't like I was sneaking around or anything. It was just sort of like, you're going to go to work and you're going to come home. So I don't really care.

Cara Steinmann (11:47.086)
What? I'd be so offended.

Cara Steinmann (12:00.846)
Hmm.

Kevin Mooney (12:10.491)
Fast forward, our au shows up. We start talking about that. She shares her location with us for her own safety, in her words. Then I find out that she tracks everybody. She's got a list this long of people who they just share their locations. And it's a thing, especially amongst those G Gen Zers. They all share their locations.

Cara Steinmann (12:31.34)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I think Snapchat, you can see everyone's, I don't really use Snapchat anymore. I only liked it for the filters, but all Parker uses Snapchat and they can see where they all are. In fact, we originally started sharing locations because Parker would call me every time I was gone. He'd call me and be like, where are you? When are you coming home? And I'd be like, how about I just share my, I'd inevitably, I was always just, just down the street, like almost home. And it's so annoying to get a phone call when you're almost home, like where are you?

Kevin Mooney (13:03.067)
You're like, I'm around the corner kid.

Cara Steinmann (13:03.874)
So was like, how about you just, how about I just share my location so you can see that I'm pulling into the driveway instead of me getting this like irritated call that I'm not home fast enough, little brat. So then when we all, and now like, just like your au pair, all my girlfriends and I share each other's location. Some of them are single. So that's, you know, I want to know if some, she goes on a date with somebody where she's at, you know, for safety wise. But yeah.

Kevin Mooney (13:12.773)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (13:26.393)
Yeah, it's something that I didn't know anything about. And now I share my location. We went to New York. Basically, my wife was like, I have to go out there for work. Do you guys want to come and make this like a little family slash work trip? So we were there for five days or something like that. She had to work on the tail ends of the weekend.

So basically I had the kids to myself in New York. My first time being there, she lived there for like maybe a year. So she knows all of the little hoods to dip into and all the cool spots to go. I don't even know which way was up or down when I got there. And I had two kids with me. So I was like, share, share the location. And then I never turned it off. And now I share my location and I don't know if she stalks me, but I stalk her when she goes on trips. Like, what does she?

Cara Steinmann (13:58.67)
That's a lot.

Cara Steinmann (14:15.342)
I'm like...

Cara Steinmann (14:24.686)
I stalk Jeremy, I stalk Jeremy all the time. Right? When I went to Alaska last summer, I kept looking just to see how far away I was from everybody. And I was like, I'm so far from my family. But like, I stalk Jeremy all the time. Last night, yesterday afternoon, I was at my friend's house or at my friend's little boutique hanging out with her having a beer. And then I...

Kevin Mooney (14:25.915)
What is she doing at a bar right now?

Kevin Mooney (14:35.653)
me.

Cara Steinmann (14:42.956)
I thought I had like two more hours before Jeremy would get home, but then I stalked his location. He was like pulling in the driveway. And so I called him and I was like, what are doing home already? didn't think, I thought I had two more hours before I had to come home and start like domesticating. And he was like, I got off early. No, I'm good. I'm gonna go for a bike ride. See you later. But anyway, it's funny. It's a whole thing.

Kevin Mooney (14:54.81)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (15:00.645)
Yeah, it's an odd thing. I didn't know about it, now I do. And I guess I'm not opposed to it, but it's kind of weird. It's kind of creepy, I suppose.

Cara Steinmann (15:11.286)
I think the only reason, like the only reason I would have a problem with it is if I was doing something shady.

Kevin Mooney (15:18.233)
Yeah, I just think it's because I was single for so long and nobody was there to sort of account for where I was at at any given time.

Cara Steinmann (15:28.832)
Yeah. I mean, I get why people would want the privacy or like the, it's not even privacy. It's like people who say that they won't, they don't like their spouse doesn't have the code for their phone. I think that's so weird. Like I have all of Jeremy's passwords. has, actually he doesn't really have any of mine. In fact, sometimes I worry about that. if something happened to me, he wouldn't even know any of his passwords because I keep them all in my vault and just cause he doesn't write anything down.

Kevin Mooney (15:41.805)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (15:47.764)
hahahaha

Kevin Mooney (15:55.299)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (15:59.899)
Yeah, I mean, we know the pins to each other's phones. We know some of the general passwords, but I'm sure there's a bunch that we don't know. And to be fair, Marchelle's big wig corporate executive level stuff. And so she has to have like one password, meaning the software, right? And it houses all of the passwords. So she's

Cara Steinmann (16:21.622)
I was gonna say, yeah.

Kevin Mooney (16:26.747)
I don't know, she looks into the camera and it scans her retina and her brain and then it inputs, you know, a 64 bit encryption code on it. And so all of that fun stuff. there's not a chance I could log in anyways. And I don't really care. I don't have any reason for that, but sharing stuff is interesting. Having a family and growing that is interesting.

Cara Steinmann (16:36.716)
Wow.

Cara Steinmann (16:53.998)
It's been a change for you. You were single for a long time.

Kevin Mooney (16:57.999)
Very long time. Yeah, it's odd. I caught up with a good friend.

Kevin Mooney (17:08.273)
Wednesday and we run into each other throughout the year, like in town. I'll see him driving, I'll see him, he's a construction guy, so I see him running an excavators over here and we're always like, hey, let's get together, let's do this, let's do that. We never do. Well, he started a family in his early 20s. His oldest is 16, I believe now. And so,

catching up, he's like, man, you've got tattoos, you're married, you have two kids. What happened? And I was like, I don't know. I'm a late bloomer, let's just say it like that. It...

Cara Steinmann (17:46.84)
Kevin's a late bloomer.

Cara Steinmann (17:52.684)
I mean, it takes a while to find somebody too. mean, feel like, I mean, I have a sister in law who's still dating. She's in her like, she's in her late thirties and she's just like, she's kind of sad sometimes when I talk to her because she's like, I really thought I'd find somebody by now, but all the men that she's dated have been older and they've got baggage. They've got kids. They've, know, and she doesn't want kids. So that's like a big conflict. If you don't want kids and somebody's got kids already. Yes.

Kevin Mooney (18:14.331)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (18:21.368)
That's a tough one to send back.

Kevin Mooney (18:23.259)
It is. Yeah, I don't think you can. I don't think it's possible. When I was when I was going through that whole dating tenure, there was. It was one of the two sides. You have a kid or multiple kids or you don't have them and you don't want them. And I was like in the middle and like, well, I don't have any. I probably want some, but at the same time.

Cara Steinmann (18:26.198)
It's frowned upon.

Cara Steinmann (18:46.21)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (18:53.115)
You know, I'm getting older, I gotta find the right person. And, I mean, luckily I found Marcelle, she had one, and then we had one and we have a nice family. But that was a hard...

hard thing, hard dynamic to deal with in the dating zone. And to be fair, most of the people that had kid had a lot of baggage and especially.

Cara Steinmann (19:10.51)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (19:15.662)
Yeah, one of my girlfriends just got divorced and she's got twin, she's got twin daughters that are 16. So she's kind of on the tail end of it. Like it does get easier. My son, you know, Parker, he's 19 and it's a lot easier than it used to be. He's a good kid. He doesn't get in a lot of trouble and it's just a lot easier now. So you're on the tail end of it, right? But she wants to date. She's been dating a little bit, my friend, and she wants to date younger guys because all their equipment still works really well.

But they tend to have younger kids too. Their kids aren't quite as old. she would, she's like on the one hand, like if I am just in this for a good time, that's fine. But if I develop a relationship and an affinity for somebody and I want to be part of their life, then I'll end up parenting, know, teenagers all over again. And I'm not sure I really want to do that. So, I mean, she's having to make those kind of, she can't have it all.

Kevin Mooney (20:05.051)
Yeah.

You can't, it's really hard. I dated some young people, know, not underage, but like 10 years younger than me when I was in my thirties. And I was like, these people, I mean, horrible. It was awful. 100 % maturity. Yeah. You're like, this is really fun.

Cara Steinmann (20:20.866)
Oof. How did that go?

Cara Steinmann (20:27.928)
just maturity wise.

Kevin Mooney (20:33.987)
And we're going out and doing things like, I remember doing some of these things. And then you try to have a conversation and you're like, no, we're on two different planets. We're not even close. So those were, those were hard. And then, you know, now have RO pairs 25. I'm like, I don't, I don't know anything about your generation. I can't figure you guys out.

Cara Steinmann (20:46.008)
totally different planets.

Cara Steinmann (21:00.888)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (21:03.309)
And one of the things that I, that we notice with that generation is if it's not served to them on a platter, they don't know what to do. Like the problem solving skills of that generation are almost non-existent. It's pretty fricking wild. And, and maybe my, my experience is a little bit skewed because our repairs from Germany. So she's trying to figure out all the American things, but

She had a nail in her tire the other day and her tire was going flat and she called me. I was like, what do you want me to do about it? Go get it fixed. She's like, but I don't know what to do. I'm like, well, first you should put air in the tire, see if it holds. She was like, okay, where do I get that? I'm like, my gosh. This is really, really hard. You guys don't know how to figure anything out.

Cara Steinmann (21:59.214)
What?

Kevin Mooney (21:59.289)
And I grew up in a world where there was no internet, there was no chat GPT, there was none of this stuff. So you had to figure it out. Or you just saw your parents going through that stuff when you were a kid, whatever. Like you were just a little bit more in tune with problem solving. And I'm probably sounding very old right now, but it's a real freaking thing.

Cara Steinmann (22:17.736)
but you're I mean you're a little bit younger than me. When were you born? Okay so you're kind of still part of that generation I consider. I was born in 80 so I consider myself part of that kind of weird shoulder generation where we didn't have any of this technology growing up so we did. You're right we drank out of the hose we had to like gen xers but I feel like I'm not a gen xer though because I feel more like millennial. Like don't tell me what to do.

Kevin Mooney (22:23.547)
85.

Kevin Mooney (22:31.504)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (22:36.885)
love that.

Kevin Mooney (22:42.746)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (22:45.986)
But then we had to adopt technology and kind of roll with it really quickly. And so we've seen both sides of it. And I feel like at that age that we were when technology was developing so quickly and the internet was coming out, our brains were still so plastic that we have, and I think we have a unique ability to understand what it was like back then, but also adopt these quick solutions. But we can still, like you said, problem solve. We can still figure it out if we have to. We can still read a map.

Kevin Mooney (22:50.757)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (23:11.525)
Yeah.

I, yeah, I remember printing out MapQuest instructions and doing this while driving, trying to figure out where I'm going, what I'm doing.

Cara Steinmann (23:24.044)
I actually thought about that a couple of days ago because we're going to on a camping trip to Mammoth, the Mammoth area and this coming weekend. And I don't know where we're going because I've never been there before. And my cousin, sister cousin, who's going to be there with us, she was like, there's no cell phone reception and no Wi-Fi there. So be prepared to bring a book or something. And I was like, I'm actually kind of upset about it because I'm like, well, Parker's coming after us. What if he gets lost? Like, he definitely doesn't know how to read a map.

Kevin Mooney (23:43.621)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (23:52.685)
Right. You know what I think about often when I first started driving and we had the Nokia cell phones? I would drive and talk on that phone all the time. It wasn't even an issue. Have you tried holding your phone to your ear and talk and drive? Like in the last five years? It's hard. Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (23:53.451)
So I'm a little nervous.

Cara Steinmann (24:16.524)
Not lately. Not lately. Is it?

Kevin Mooney (24:22.319)
I don't know why. Somehow in my truck, the Bluetooth didn't connect one day. And I was driving and I got a call from Marshall and I was like, I gotta pick this thing up. And so I pick it up and I'm holding it and I'm driving. And it felt so, it probably is, but when I first started driving and first had a cell phone, that was just what you did. You were just like, yeah, what's up man? What's going on? You're cruising down the street.

Cara Steinmann (24:38.028)
I think that's your age.

Cara Steinmann (24:50.094)
Well that was quite some time ago though, you probably didn't have to turn down the volume to find an address back then either.

Kevin Mooney (24:56.741)
Sure, but it's just, it's an odd sensory thing.

Cara Steinmann (25:00.952)
I'll have to try it and see how it goes. Cause I haven't, I have not tried it. I think the last time my Bluetooth wasn't working, I had it on speaker and I was just holding it. I didn't have it like up to my ear though.

Kevin Mooney (25:08.24)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (25:11.887)
Yeah, I did old school right up to my ear and it just felt really weird. Like I didn't have control of either thing. And I think I still think about it all the time. Like that was such an easy thing. I also think this is a really, really weird thought, but I also think that these auto manufacturers are fucking with the glass and like the wind windshields on these newer vehicles.

Cara Steinmann (25:41.016)
so that they break all the time?

Kevin Mooney (25:41.379)
Where probably, but more from a visual perception. When you, this happened in my Tacoma, when I, when I bought a newer Tacoma and now it's in the Ford that I have, when I'm sitting there and I'm looking straight out the windshield, everything looks clear. But if I tilt my head just a slight bit,

Cara Steinmann (25:49.239)
Really?

Kevin Mooney (26:08.823)
Everything goes a little bit wonky. Maybe I'm getting old and my eyes are starting to fail me, or there's something in the glass that is making it really weird. But I'll fuck around with it. I'm driving and I'll just drive like this from time to time.

Cara Steinmann (26:19.669)
Interesting.

Cara Steinmann (26:23.832)
So you noticed it in your Tacoma and in your Ford? Huh.

Kevin Mooney (26:28.123)
Yeah, but I drove my 99 Tacoma. bought it when I graduated high school and I drove that until 2022. And that was never a problem. But you know, this Tacoma was like, roll your windows down like this, you know, slide the little heater button to slot number three to get the AC blowing or whatever. It was old school.

And then when I bought the new Tacoma, was a 21 and had all the fancy electronic shit. I started to notice this and maybe again, maybe this is an age thing, but I nearly got into two accidents in that Tacoma where somebody in front of me was slowing down rapidly and I didn't catch it until much later. And I was like, holy shit. Like how did

How is this happening? I've been driving for 25 years at this point. How did I almost get into two accidents? And I had never been in an accident in my life leading up to that point. So it was really, really bad in the Tacoma. In the Ford, I haven't had any problems with that depth perception, but it was happening on the Tacoma. It's really, really strange. So a Super Duty 350 now, big old diesel.

Cara Steinmann (27:49.742)
What kind of fort are you driving?

Cara Steinmann (27:54.356)
Jesus. Wow.

Kevin Mooney (27:57.051)
you

A lot of reasons for that, but well, the main reason was I just wanted one. I was like, no, no, I understand that. I know you just gave me the look. Couple of reasons. I bought the Tacoma and I loved it. And it was just Louie and I in the Tacoma and he would ride shotgun all the time. And then I got with Marchelle and all of a sudden just putting Cass in the back was like,

Cara Steinmann (28:05.718)
I didn't say anything. I didn't even say anything.

hehe

Kevin Mooney (28:29.093)
There's not any room and the Tacomas have a little tiny five foot bed in the back. So it was really, really, really, really small. So it was like, okay, it's probably time to go a little bit bigger.

Cara Steinmann (28:41.41)
No, I get it. You're a family man now. And I don't see you driving a minivan, so what are your options?

Kevin Mooney (28:43.717)
So.

No. Right, go straight to the full-size one-ton super duty that can pull a spaceship. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Cara Steinmann (28:53.74)
Yeah. I say if you want it though, sometimes I know this is coming from a very privileged space, but also like if you buy a car and you love it, you're going to drive the wheels off of it. And you're never like buying and selling cars is always a losing venture. I cannot tell you how much money, I just had the worst like car buying experience because I accidentally fucked up and bought a front wheel drive and I wanted all wheel drive.

Kevin Mooney (29:00.539)
Sure.

Kevin Mooney (29:05.371)
yeah.

Kevin Mooney (29:10.917)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Steinmann (29:23.168)
and I can't like, I could get out of my driveway, but if it ever frosted, I wouldn't get out of my driveway. So I kind of need like all wheel drive or four wheel drive at least. And then I traded it in, I lost a ton of money trading it in and got the car that I wanted. And the more I drive it, the more I love it. And I'm going to drive it forever till the wheels fall off. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (29:28.389)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (29:41.605)
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of weird that I'm driving one of those and I don't tow a lot of things around. I drive it from my house to downtown. I park in the parking garage. I come into my office. I do computer work. Like it's really, it's really kind of cheesy.

Cara Steinmann (30:00.45)
You're not really pushing the limits of what that truck can do.

Kevin Mooney (30:03.355)
No, but I'll open it up when I get out there. And to be fair, have a drift boat that I like to float down rivers and go fishing out of. And the Tacoma can pull it, but the Tacoma already got 15 miles to the gallon in a new Tacoma. And then I'd pull the boat and it was like 11. So I was like, why not go to the biggest thing possible? That four gets...

22 miles to the gallon and then you pull anything and it doesn't even know what's behind it and so it doesn't drop. It's like, fuck it, go get the big truck. Just do it. Then you get to drive around in a diesel all day and you're like, it's like a dark gray type of a color. We were talking about getting a new truck.

Cara Steinmann (30:46.082)
Just do it.

Cara Steinmann (30:50.156)
What color is it?

Cara Steinmann (30:55.629)
Okay.

Kevin Mooney (31:01.499)
And then, I think, I I I I I I I I think, I I think, think, think, think, think, I think, think, I think, think, think, think, think, think, think,

Cara Steinmann (31:20.322)
Well, it's so nice to sit up high like that too.

Kevin Mooney (31:30.989)
your shoulders are rubbing together. So she really likes it. I really like it. The kids like it. It's got like heating and cooling in the seats and AC back there and they get to press all the buttons and it's moon roof, the whole nine yards. But we got a really good deal on it. I was aggressive on paying the Tacoma down when I bought it. So I owed a little bit, but essentially that was a huge down payment on the truck and we got a pretty...

Cara Steinmann (31:33.869)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (31:41.271)
Ugh.

Kevin Mooney (31:59.963)
pretty solid deal.

Cara Steinmann (32:00.43)
I know car payments suck. We owe a little bit left on Jeremy's Ranger. He's got a newer Ford Ranger, but other than that, we just paid off the van a little while ago. We've got that transit van. We're thinking about selling it because we don't do a lot of... We used to travel around when the boys were racing mountain bikes and stay in it and sleep in it and stuff, but Parker's 19 now and he doesn't even think he could fit in it to sleep.

Kevin Mooney (32:07.695)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (32:24.772)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (32:24.878)
So, but like we're taking it camping this weekend. We'll be in like a cabin situation, but we do need to sleep in it one night. So we have the bed in there. It's kind of nice if you do need to sleep in it. And I love it for skiing. Like we take it skiing in the winter and you can change in there and hang out when it's cold outside. And so, I don't know, part of me wants to get rid of it because we need the room and the driveway. And it's just like when it sits all summer, I feel bad. But then in the winter, when we use it for skiing, I'm like, fuck, I really like this van.

Kevin Mooney (32:40.752)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (32:48.123)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Steinmann (32:52.972)
I'd be mad, I'd be really mad if like my skis were on top of the vehicle right now and I was changing in the parking lot. sugar bowl.

Kevin Mooney (32:53.019)
Yeah

Kevin Mooney (32:58.939)
Alright, where do you guys go ski at? Yeah. Isn't Sugar Bowl getting like a facelift right now?

Cara Steinmann (33:07.478)
I don't know. We've gone there for years. The homeowners own Sugar Bowl. It's like owned by the homeowners association. so there's I think they kept cutting back the number of passes that they would sell every year. So it's never crowded. Like you never stand in line there and it's only 45 minutes from our house. So it's kind of like I mean, we could there's so many cool ski resorts around here, but it's so close. Like you can mountain bike in the morning and ski in the afternoon and

Kevin Mooney (33:27.44)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (33:37.09)
You know, it's just so close.

Kevin Mooney (33:38.117)
Yeah. Yeah. I think about, mean, I think about what happened up in Tahoe. I haven't been down to Tahoe in...

Cara Steinmann (33:49.506)
You mean like the housing and stuff?

Kevin Mooney (33:51.375)
Just how much it's blown up. Our trainer used to live down there. He lived in Tahoe City in Incline Village. And then I have some buddies or a buddy that lives, what's the little town just outside of South Lake? Myers. I think he lives there in Myers, but he just, hear the reports of like, it is bananas.

Cara Steinmann (33:53.08)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (34:12.077)
Hello.

Kevin Mooney (34:19.843)
like the housing that's gone in and the people that have moved there and all of that stuff. But yeah, I haven't been down in Tahoe in easily 10 years, but I do miss that area and miss some of those. I miss going to like Donner Pass or Donner Ski Ranch, whatever the place was called. You know, like that stuff was so much fun. was so old school. It was a blast from the past.

Cara Steinmann (34:39.778)
yeah.

Cara Steinmann (34:45.804)
Parker and Jeremy get up there all the time for like to ride moto and ride mountain bikes and stuff. And I don't get up very often, but I think we might actually, I might go tomorrow up to Truckee and golf at this little, little municipal course called Ponderosa that's super fun.

Kevin Mooney (35:00.227)
Yeah. So you got into golf because you wanted more time with Jeremy and you had no experience in golf, right?

Cara Steinmann (35:08.216)
had very little experience in golf. Yeah, our friends, we have a couple of friends that we were playing pickleball with a lot. And I went like, I went to high school with him. Jeremy and I both went to high school together and we went to high school with our friend Matt and then his wife, Sky, they golfed all the time and they were like, you should come try it. It's just, it's silly. We'll go to the little nine hole course. We'll just play best ball. It'll be super, super chill. And it's been tough because Jeremy gets really, really frustrated and I'm not as competitive. So I don't really care if I suck.

But I thought it would be a good thing for us to keep doing together just because Parker's not as interested in hanging out with us as he used to be. And we're very different. We have very different like recreational activities. Like he loves to mountain bike. And I'm like, it's okay. I really don't want to get hurt. I feel like I'm gonna get hurt every time I get on a mountain bike. And historically that is true.

Kevin Mooney (35:57.317)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (35:59.458)
But yeah, so we picked it up about 18 months ago together. But I did have like a week of golf camp when I was like eight years old, because my grandparents made all his grandkids do it. And then I did play like for a few months in high school, just with some friends. We used to sneak out to Auburn Valley Country Club and play like at Twilight, but pretty minimal. I didn't know any rules or anything.

Kevin Mooney (36:20.219)
And how do you like it now?

Cara Steinmann (36:22.408)
Well, I'm obsessed. It's my hyper, my ADHD is hyper fixated on it right now. Yeah. You should see my TikTok thread. It's my TikTok algorithm is just tall golf. It's addictive.

Kevin Mooney (36:23.963)
Are you?

What is it about golf?

Kevin Mooney (36:32.601)
What is it about that? I understand that, like, are you obsessed with the idea of being out on a course or are you obsessed with perfecting the swing and the chips and all of that stuff? Like, is it the technical part of golf that you like?

Cara Steinmann (36:51.468)
I think it's both. really like being out there. You know, it's like hanging out in a park day drinking. I mean, it's a good time. It's fun. I mean, you can do it without drinking also. you know, last I played, I joined the ladies league at the local golf club here and at 9.30. So we started playing at like eight. And when the beverage cart gal came by at 9.30, I was so frustrated. I got a double vodka lemonade.

Kevin Mooney (36:56.623)
Yeah, there's a lot of drinking in golf.

Kevin Mooney (37:03.771)
For sure.

Kevin Mooney (37:20.185)
That a girl. It always does. See, I don't, I start with something. Like we're out on the driving range just practicing and waiting for our tea time to come up and I got a beer down at minimum.

Cara Steinmann (37:21.302)
And actually my game got a little better, but there's a balance.

Cara Steinmann (37:35.8)
See, now I didn't even know you golfed. Are you good at it?

Kevin Mooney (37:40.863)
No, let me say it like this. I grew up golfing. I played in tournaments. don't, I don't, not that I know of. Like I was the, I was like the sports kid growing up. Right. So I did all the, all of the sports and I, my dad started taking me to the golf course, I think like when him and my grandpa would go. And so I started at a really young age and I did like,

Cara Steinmann (37:46.062)
You have a handicap?

Kevin Mooney (38:10.939)
classes at Whitney Oaks. No wait, what was that? Is it Whitney Oaks that right off of Midas? I think it's closed down now. Is that correct? Yeah. Okay, so it's Whitney Oaks I believe. So we used, I would go and do swimming lessons there and I would do golf lessons there. And then we would play out at Indian Creek a lot. nice. I haven't played there in 20 years. Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (38:13.217)
wow.

think Whitney Oaks is down in Rocklin.

Cara Steinmann (38:21.92)
I think that is Whitney Oaks.

Cara Steinmann (38:34.774)
played there last night with Jeremy. Or no, the night before, night before.

Kevin Mooney (38:41.019)
So I would play a lot and I was pretty good and I played in tournaments, but my brain didn't know how to like keep score or figure out your handicap. So I don't know. And I played quite a bit until I moved up here. And then, cause I was in my like poor phase of life, you know, in my twenties where it was like, I had 50 bucks and I could spend that at the bar or I could go golf.

And so I just went to the bar and did there. But we would play every now and again. I mean, I can hang. Like, I'm pretty all right.

Cara Steinmann (39:19.754)
It sounds like it. I'll bet you're probably better than you give yourself credit for.

Kevin Mooney (39:23.397)
Probably better than some folks, but I take it very not serious. Meaning, I don't want to wear shoes. I don't really care about the attire. I want to drive the cart because that's always fun. I like hitting my drivers. I don't really like the fairway so much. I like a short approach. At Whitney Oaks, I got really good at chipping. So I really like the chip and I hate putting.

Cara Steinmann (39:28.963)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (39:37.421)
Yep.

Cara Steinmann (39:50.68)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (39:52.955)
So I walk up to the ball in the green and I just go and just kind of smack it at the hole. And a lot of times I'll nail it like a 30 foot putt and then other times I'm like 15 feet past it. But I think if I went with people who didn't take it seriously, it would be fine. I get frustrated when people are like by the book and like.

Sure, let's be quiet, let's have some course etiquette, but we're also here, we're amateurs, we're having fun, let's not be too serious about it. We're four years old here, okay? So if I went with people that didn't take it so seriously, I think I'd actually loosen up even more and I would play better. But over the last few years, I've developed this really nasty slice. And it was because...

Somewhere in my 20s, I had figured out how I could correct the slice. then fast forward to today, I try to recreate that thing, but I don't play often enough so that the swing is all broken. And I can hit the ball a country mile, but it might be two holes over.

Cara Steinmann (40:59.768)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (41:05.749)
It's a tough sport. mean, when you think about all the, like, when you think about the fact that that ball's just sitting there not even doing anything, and you're the only factor, how many different ways can I fuck this up? Every single time. But then you get one great shot and you're like, that felt really good. It sounded good too. And then inevitably if I hit a great drive, everything else I do sucks on that hole. Chipping's hard. Chipping is really hard.

Kevin Mooney (41:13.445)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (41:19.34)
every way.

Kevin Mooney (41:30.531)
Of course. Yeah.

It is, yeah. I don't know, I enjoy golf, I love it. All of the aspects of golf are hard, but it's just fun to hear you get into that thing, of all things.

Cara Steinmann (41:48.876)
I know I'm so annoyed with myself because I won't shut up about it. I'm I'm annoying myself with how obsessed I am. And I know Jeremy's not as into it as I am, but he's playing with me because it's something we can do together and I don't take it too seriously. So if he sucks, it's okay. It's not like we're being competitive, but it's definitely been a culture, like it's been culture shock. Cause the friends we play with, we have music going, we're drinking, we're having a good time. Nobody takes it seriously. I like up until this point for the last 18 months,

Kevin Mooney (41:51.483)
you

Cara Steinmann (42:17.346)
Sometimes we play best ball. If I hit it out of bounds and I can't find it, I just throw a new ball on the fairway and I don't give myself a penalty. Half the time we don't even keep score. Because that just makes it not very much fun sometimes. But I wanted to golf more often because I do feel like I, you know, I'm only 45. And if this is a sport that I could do for the next 20 years, I feel like I could progress and be decent at it at some point in the future. And so I do want to get better, which means I need to play more and I need to play with people who are better than me.

Kevin Mooney (42:24.325)
Yeah. Yeah, I do the same stuff. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (42:39.717)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (42:46.422)
And so I joined the ladies league at the country club, they're very, I mean, they say they're there for fun, but they're very rigid about the rules. And in fact, one of the rules they have is even more rigid for the golf league specifically is more rigid than like the house rules for the course. Like the men's league, they give you free relief in all the tree wells, regardless of where they are. But the ladies league, if you're on like the wrong side of the cart path, you don't get free relief and you have to hit it where it lies.

Kevin Mooney (43:06.811)
Hmm.

Cara Steinmann (43:12.268)
which has happened to me several times, which is why I just switched from right-handed to left-handed because I had a wicked slice too that I couldn't fix. I think I told you I was doing that, didn't I? No? So like, yeah, just this weekend, this last weekend. No, but no, but okay. Well, I mean, maybe there's a little maybe fill in me somewhere. I don't know. But I'm left-handed. I'm very left-handed. And my husband's left-handed too, but he's always played all his sports. He throws right-handed, he bats right-handed. I...

Kevin Mooney (43:22.107)
No, you switched from right hand to left hand? What are you, Phil Mickelson? What's going on?

Kevin Mooney (43:31.567)
Hahaha!

Cara Steinmann (43:42.102)
I learned right-handed when I was like eight. And then I did play like for those few months in high school, I played left-handed. So I have done both, but when you start playing, played, I tried a left-handed club, I tried a right-handed club, but when you start playing, nothing feels good. Everything sucks. Contact is inconsistent. Everything feels awkward. Switching hands was weird. So the golf pro down at Hagen Oaks where we were demoing the clubs, he was like,

Kevin Mooney (43:58.597)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (44:08.544)
If you can play right-handed at all, since you're just getting started, just play right-handed. Because your club selection is going to be easier to find, you'll be able to pick up whatever equipment you need right-handed. It's just so much easier. And so I did. But I got to suspecting that maybe I was fucked up just recently. And so I didn't tell you what I did with ChatGPT.

Kevin Mooney (44:30.521)
You were talking about it in our last call, but you were just, you, you had just mentioned that you were putting in a bunch of data into it. Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (44:31.458)
I feel like I might not have done it yet. I think I hadn't done it yet. Okay, so here's what I did. Here's what I did. I went to Hagen Oaks and I took my right-handed clubs with me and I demoed some of the same exact clubs, but left-handed. And I videotaped myself in slow motion just from the rear. I didn't get the front or the side, but I just did the review. And I hit like three or four balls with...

three different clubs, left-handed and right-handed. And then I uploaded it to ChatGPT and I said, here's what's going on. I've got a terrible slice when I'm driving. I just suck. Tell me what I'm doing wrong. And tell me how my swing looks left-handed versus right-handed. Which way should I be playing? And she said,

I hate, she's like, I hate to tell you this, because you already have right-handed clubs and everything, but you look way more natural. You're coming over the top when you're playing right-handed. You look really, like your hips aren't engaging. And left-handed, even though you look timid, because you probably, because you haven't been swinging that direction, it looks more natural and you look more athletic and your hips are actually moving the way that they're supposed to move. And so was like, well, shit, are you just telling me this? Cause you think it's what I want to hear.

Kevin Mooney (45:45.946)
Hahaha

Cara Steinmann (45:46.946)
And she was like, no, that's a valid question, but no, here's why. So chat GPT says I should be playing left-handed. I had a lesson the next day, last Saturday, already set up to help fix my slice try with this guy at the pro shop that we've done some lessons with before. So he's seen me swing right-handed quite a bit. And I just said, instead of trying to fix my slice, go bring down the left-handed demo clubs or the left-handed clubs and...

watch, just watch me swing left and right and tell me what you think. And he was like, he felt really bad at first cause he was like, did I miss this when we started doing lessons? Like, is this my fault? And I was like, no, I don't think I even mentioned that I was actually left-handed. But he's like, I tell Jeremy, I'm really sorry, but I think you need to go get some left-handed clubs and start like better late than never. Right? Like I'm 18 months into it. Yes. I've got some muscle memory. I'm used to swinging right-handed, but I'm not doing very well.

Kevin Mooney (46:32.527)
Whoa. Whoa.

Kevin Mooney (46:41.722)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (46:42.518)
It's not going well. And it was really obvious once I started keeping score with the ladies because I've been working really hard on my short game, but it's easier to manipulate your short game than it is your full swing. So it was taking me like, I was pretty consistently like one, two, three putting, like that's been better, but I was taking like six shots to get to the green.

Kevin Mooney (46:54.617)
Yeah, 100%.

Cara Steinmann (47:07.052)
And these ladies are going straight. So even if they're not hitting as far as I am sometimes, they're getting there faster than me because I'm off in the fucking bushes and behind trees and shit.

Kevin Mooney (47:15.023)
Yeah, that's old man, old lady golf, right? You don't swing hard, you just hit it straight, you just get there. yeah.

Cara Steinmann (47:18.794)
so smart. They're so smart about it. They're laying up. They're not trying to take the big shot across the pond. They're super smart. And so I was, so I did it. went and I traded the next day. I went to Hagen Oaks and I traded all my clubs in. They gave me a really good trade in value. And I only had to come out of pocket a couple hundred bucks to basically replenish my bag with left-handed clubs. And it's going straight.

Kevin Mooney (47:40.442)
done

Cara Steinmann (47:43.052)
I played 18 holes Sunday for the first time and then I played 18 holes Wednesday morning and nine on Wednesday night. And I'm hitting probably twice as far with my driver. contact is pretty, like it's inconsistent still, cause I don't really trust myself. But when I'm at the range and I'm hitting, it's going way farther and it's going straight. So.

Kevin Mooney (47:53.659)
Whoa.

Kevin Mooney (48:08.955)
Crazy.

Cara Steinmann (48:09.166)
I don't know, it was a bold move, but I think it's gonna pay off.

Kevin Mooney (48:11.803)
I mean, you're a golfer now, you're talking the talk and you're doing it.

Cara Steinmann (48:15.47)
I know, I love it. I think it's so fun. I wish there were more young gals that would go play with me. It's not that I'm young, but my cart pal at the last game was 86. And it's cute, it's cute, but they're also, they're not moving very quickly. And I feel like we don't really have a lot in common. One of them used to play golf with my grandma.

Kevin Mooney (48:26.981)
It's kind of cute.

Kevin Mooney (48:43.611)
That's, yeah, that's a thing.

Cara Steinmann (48:45.218)
But I'm learning a lot and I really, I really, do you hate it when people give you unsolicited advice? Or are you one of those people who's just very humble and gracious about it?

Kevin Mooney (48:58.777)
That's an interesting question. I was going to say it depends on, it depends on what it is, what category we're talking about. Like if somebody wanted to just give me unsolicited advice about branding or marketing, building websites, I'd be like, go fuck yourself. I don't have time for this.

Cara Steinmann (49:00.428)
Or does it depend on what it is?

Cara Steinmann (49:13.986)
building websites?

Kevin Mooney (49:25.147)
But, but you know, a lot of times when it's a stranger to me and they just say something and it clicks, I'm like, thank you. That's like, like, that's really nice. That was very helpful. Thank you. So I think I'm pretty open to it in a lot of areas. I think it, I think it also depends on like how, how the advice, how we arrive to the advice.

So if we're golfing and I'm playing with a buddy who's really good and we're driving to the golf course and he's like, dude, I'll teach you, I'll fix your swing. I got all this, I got all of that. And then we get to the course and I'm warming up and he was like, it's pretty good. Just maybe try this. And then we get on the course and I hit a terrible shot and then he jumps in there. I'm like, fuck you, get out of here. I don't have time for this. But.

Cara Steinmann (50:23.523)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (50:25.647)
But if they just like come in at hole three and they're like, hey, it's pretty clear that you're doing this. I'll be like, all right, I'll think about that. So I just think if it's like you kind of poke and prod along the way, like I'm better than you, I know more than you, or I can fix this for you, then I get pissed off. But if it just kind of comes in out of nowhere on a left field, I'll actually take that advice. So I think it's how we arrived.

Cara Steinmann (50:50.198)
I think it depends on who's giving the advice. No, you're not. I am very like averse to advice, even though I need it sometimes and I'm new to the golf game. So I'm trying to be super humble, but like on the course when you're playing is not the time to fix things.

Kevin Mooney (50:51.387)
I'm an asshole.

Kevin Mooney (51:06.907)
100%.

Cara Steinmann (51:08.5)
And it happened to me, like it's happened to me before when I was trying to get out of the sand during a tournament and the guys we were playing with, I got to play in a tournament for Jeremy's work and it was really fun. But I was like, I hit like maybe one shot that we used in the best ball. I was third wheel. But these guys we were playing with were really good. And so I was struggling to get out of the sand and he came over and he was like, here, try opening up your club face a little bit. And it was brilliant. And I was like, that's amazing. Thank you so much. But then.

Kevin Mooney (51:21.113)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (51:35.77)
Right.

Cara Steinmann (51:36.448)
Wednesday when I was playing, was actually driving pretty decently and I didn't even have my driver yet. I was hitting a five wood off the tee because I didn't have a driver yet. And it went just a little bit left, but it wasn't bad. If we hadn't been like right on the edge of a creek, it would have stayed in. And the lady, one of ladies was playing with, goes, I know what you're doing wrong. You're doing X, Y, Z. And I was like, thank you so much for that observation. But in my head, I'm like, go just.

Kevin Mooney (52:02.597)
Yeah. Go fuck yourself.

Cara Steinmann (52:06.346)
Shut the fuck up. I don't want to hear that right now, because I probably already know what I did wrong there. Like that is, I probably came over the top a little bit or didn't have my club face closed or whatever. And it's already done. So shut up.

Kevin Mooney (52:07.513)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (52:12.389)
you

Kevin Mooney (52:19.545)
Yeah. So yeah, you could have told me that before I swing, know, swing, swung, swung.

Cara Steinmann (52:24.172)
Well, it's also, I'm in the middle of, I'm playing. I don't need any more stuff in my head to think about right now, especially as a beginner golfer.

Kevin Mooney (52:30.275)
Yeah. Have you watched, have you watched stick?

Cara Steinmann (52:35.541)
Yes. Do you have you?

Kevin Mooney (52:37.781)
I'm like waiting for the last episode. We finished all of them up until last night.

Cara Steinmann (52:39.948)
I know. Yep, we caught caught up on that last episode last night. It's super cute.

Kevin Mooney (52:44.667)
But it's a real thing though, like one bad shot and you're just in your head the rest of the time. And you got to use, what is it, Gary Grosswiener's idea of forgetting your last shot and moving forward, whatever the guy's name is. But it's a very heady sport. It's fun, it's cool. I'm glad that you're doing it. I haven't golfed too much recently.

I did golf with my father-in-law and I don't know if he enjoyed it. He might have, but shortly thereafter I landed a golf client. And so I have a current client on retainer that runs a private club here in Bend. And I probably should have called you and just picked your brain for hours about golf. Cause I'm, I'm like a touch removed from it.

Cara Steinmann (53:39.992)
Mm.

Kevin Mooney (53:40.175)
I've played most of my life. I understand the game, the rules, the people, but I'm not like right on the cusp of it. Ultimately golf is kind of in its upswing right now, right? It's coming back just like Formula One. Right, exactly. Exactly. I was saying formula, exactly, yeah.

Cara Steinmann (53:53.432)
I think COVID helped with that. Yeah. Exacula.

it's interesting golfing as a female because we're definitely the minority. Like when Jeremy and I went up to band in dunes, I didn't even know what a big deal band and dunes was over up in Oregon. it's like a destination for golf. And when I had chat GPT help us plan our itinerary for our anniversary road trip, it said, by the way, if you're into golf, band and dunes is up here. And so we were like, cool, let's go check it out. I didn't realize it was such a big deal. People were there from Canada and like the East coast.

Kevin Mooney (54:11.034)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (54:31.37)
on all these bro-y trips. saw one other, we were there for two days, we stayed at the resort and I saw one other female golfer the whole time and it was an older gal playing with her husband. I was like the only woman of my age. It was just, it's such a bro-y sport. I'm almost always the only female at the driving range. It took me a really long time to even be comfortable enough to go there by myself because I know everybody wants to give you advice. All the dudes are all like,

Kevin Mooney (54:39.674)
Really?

Kevin Mooney (54:49.562)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (55:00.61)
Hey, check out this YouTube channel. It's got some really great yada yada yada or whatever. Like, I just just leave me the fuck alone. It's terrible.

Kevin Mooney (55:08.059)
Yeah. Let me turn these things off really fast. There is maybe some feedback. I want to see if it's in my microphone or in my headphones or your microphone.

Cara Steinmann (55:30.509)
I can't hear you.

I can't hear you.

Cara Steinmann (55:40.472)
Was your input coming from your headphones?

Cara Steinmann (56:22.37)
Now can't hear you.

Cara Steinmann (56:26.574)
What's your input?

Kevin Mooney (01:00.026)
So I think we're still recording. think.

records locally and then it can like piece it back together later. But I don't hear any of that weird sound from you.

Cara Steinmann (00:08.043)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Steinmann (00:16.288)
It's all this podcasting stuff is just complicated. I'm really impressed that you've got your whole setup together and you, you you figured it out. You took a very long time deciding what you wanted to, how you wanted to set up.

Kevin Mooney (00:30.148)
I mean, I have the camera up here now and yesterday I had it over here and I'm like just trying to kind of play with it. I'm realizing that this software is pretty glitchy and you know, whatever, it works for now.

Cara Steinmann (00:46.562)
I mean, none of them are perfect. I want to say I used Squadcast for a little while and that was fine. But I had really slow wifi at the time too. So that was part of the problem. I don't know, Zoom has been pretty good. But the only problem with Zoom is that, no, you know what? You do get separate audio tracks with Zoom. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (00:52.484)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (00:56.452)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:00.632)
Yeah, I mean, I

Kevin Mooney (01:08.74)
Yeah, I think, I think what I want to do is just get it set up for in person and then, and then you can control everything. And if you do a zoom call, then it's like, whatever. It's just a zoom call, but kind of relying on Riverside as a platform seems a little bit, a little bit odd. It it's really good. It's got great features, but it seems really glitchy. Like in the first show with Peter, it stopped halfway.

Cara Steinmann (01:15.192)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (01:36.944)
through and kicked us both out. Which is fun, you know, when you go back and you look at the editor, it just has the different video tracks, the different audio tracks, and it just layers them and connects them and it's not a problem. But it's kind of weird to be like, we're just gone? Where did we go? What happened?

Cara Steinmann (01:38.902)
my god.

Cara Steinmann (01:55.576)
Well, you kind of want to, you want to do in-person recording anyway, right?

Kevin Mooney (01:59.598)
Yeah, that's the ultimate goal. Yeah, it's just, it's complex. I was talking about this yesterday. It's just so complex. have to have, you kind of have to plan out each item appropriately. You have to have an XLR microphone because that's got to go into a mixer. And then you have to have cameras that, you know,

I don't have an HDMI cable that can go into that same mixer so the audio and the video can connect and then you have to use the right platform. And so I can go out and buy a Rode PodMic and then I might not be able to use that in the future because it just uses USB or something like that.

Cara Steinmann (02:48.514)
Yeah, in person is, that's been one of the most frustrating things starting this podcast with my sister, Christmas, has been that she wants to record in person all the time. And I'm used to having the separate audio tracks so you can kind of get rid of somebody else's, you know, dog barking in the background or whatever, and it doesn't ruin the whole track. But also we ended up deciding that done is better than perfect at this point and we just need to like do it.

Kevin Mooney (02:59.268)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (03:13.488)
Yes.

Cara Steinmann (03:15.114)
and that it might not be perfect. And we ended up discovering that Zoom is doing a great job of like filtering out background noise too. Her dog, I think I told you her dog was barking in the middle of one of the recordings that we were doing and you couldn't even hear the dog. I kept saying shit like, this is gonna suck, my God. And then we go listen to it back and you can't even hear the dog. I was like, holy shit.

Kevin Mooney (03:27.727)
Yeah.

Great.

Yeah, well, I was kind of wondering about that when I heard that like buzz in my headset. I was like, how long do I let this go? She's like, she's talking. Maybe it's just here. Maybe won't even hear it. And then I do one stupid thing. I turn it off and then everything went all fucking wonky.

Cara Steinmann (03:45.25)
Maybe you won't even hear it.

Cara Steinmann (03:52.024)
Hey wire. I'm curious. My dog came in and barked also. So I'm curious to see if you'll hear that on the recording, but I don't know.

Kevin Mooney (03:58.736)
I don't think I heard it. I I've got echo cancellation on and of course mine turned off during this whole glitchy thing so now there's probably an echo but they've got a lot of tools built in where you can select a track, you can select a section of a track and you can fix the audio in just that one part but I don't really know how to use it all just yet.

Cara Steinmann (04:25.238)
I told you I found that company, Alphonic, and they have, they're like auto master AI mastering is so good. It like removes all the background noise. It removed all of Christmas's plosives. She kept, she was so mad at herself cause we listened to it back and she keeps going, she's making like the smacking sound with her mouth. And she's like, my God, that's so horrible. And it completely removed it once we ran it through Alphonic. I was really impressed.

Kevin Mooney (04:28.719)
Yes.

Kevin Mooney (04:45.136)
I think I was just doing that.

Kevin Mooney (04:54.03)
Yeah, yeah, it's a whole thing. I don't know. I just, like you said, done is better than perfect and I'm just doing it and I'm talking about whatever I want to talk about with whoever I want to talk about. And if it dips into business, it does. If it stays on golf for two hours and it's on golf, like it's a golf episode. don't care. No, well, I mean, here's the reality though. And I was dipping into it. I, I'm trying to.

Cara Steinmann (04:57.389)
Yep.

Cara Steinmann (05:13.572)
Don't let me do that to you.

Kevin Mooney (05:22.842)
have this client extend with me for another year. This is not to beat my own chest, but we did a really good job in the first year for them. Huge ROI, like it's case study material. And I'm getting a little bit concerned because the, basically we were tasked with generating leads for them. They needed leads. They needed to bring in some new people, new blood and

Cara Steinmann (05:31.992)
Good, good for you.

Kevin Mooney (05:51.758)
And we did that for them and they have huge ROI. But the leads are starting to taper off. Granted, we're in July, it's peak season. People are already settled in to where they're at. They're not really signing up for new clubs right now. And this club isn't the cheapest club, right? It's already a private club. It's been here for 50 years or something like that. So long standing club.

relatively high price point, bring in, or somebody jumping on at this point is rough for them. But what I'm thinking about is like, well, you're in the scene, they want to bring in more women. What do I say to women to try to like coax them in? Or I'm not literally asking you that question right now, but I'm thinking to myself, what is something that I can do over this

fall and winter and have them come in next spring. And I don't know what the answer is, but I know that they want some more women in the club. And they have women in the club right now. And most of them are the, let me back out of that a little bit. Most of the members are lifelong private club golf members, right? There's a whole scene that I didn't know about. Like people grew up in private clubs.

in the houses, the communities around there or their families. It's like the Yacht Club, right? Everyone just, I grew up in the Yacht Club. And so.

You've got these old ladies who sit in there and crochet and play chess and play checkers. And it's like, great. How do we bring in the new generation of people? What do they want? What do they need? What do they care about? Is it just kind of tagging along with their spouse or is it? I just, I see a lot of women playing this and I want to get into it. You know, where does that kind of fall? And so I'm just, I want to get back into golf and ask you golf questions.

Cara Steinmann (07:56.014)
I can only speak from my own experience and I'm a novice. I'll be a novice for years, right? But for me, if I wanted to play more golf, Jeremy has the nine to five job. I have more flexibility. if I have to work, I can move my schedule around so that Wednesdays are open for golf league, right? I think that that's probably not typical.

I've struggled. I want to play more. So I think making it accessible for women, I could go sign up for a tee time anytime I want, right? But I probably going to get paired with a bunch of dudes and I don't want to play golf with a bunch of random dudes. One, because I'm married and I don't think my husband would probably appreciate that very much. I don't want to hang out with a bunch of random dudes that are probably bro-y probably way better than I am and probably don't want to fuck around with waiting for me.

Kevin Mooney (08:39.322)
Right, the bros.

Kevin Mooney (08:52.772)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Steinmann (08:53.518)
It's not accessible. It's not an accessible sport for women in a lot of ways, partly because it's mostly men and not all of us want to go hang out with a bunch of dudes. No offense to the dudes, but it's just not what I'm all about right now. I don't mind being, and Jeremy and I get paired up with random people all the time and that's fine because Jeremy and I are out there playing together. But if I go play by my, it's just, it's not easy to go golf by yourself as a woman. You have to have a bunch of people to go with or.

Kevin Mooney (08:57.904)
100.

Cara Steinmann (09:22.222)
you just go to the driving range and hit balls. And even then...

Kevin Mooney (09:24.368)
So what makes it accessible to women?

Cara Steinmann (09:29.794)
I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. ladies leagues. I mean, I will say the ladies league, I joined it. It's not ideal because I have to wear a collar. I think that's kind of bullshit. If Tiger Woods can, I mean, not that we're, know, not that I'm Tiger Woods, but if he can, if he can wear like, you know, I think it was the US Open that year. He wore that red Nike t-shirt. Why can't I wear like an athletic tank instead of a stupid collared shirt? That is not.

Kevin Mooney (09:32.025)
Yeah

Kevin Mooney (09:43.636)
huh, huh.

Kevin Mooney (09:51.706)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (09:58.082)
the jam that is not the vibe that I'm going for, but it's the rules at the club and you gotta wear a stupid, it's antiquated. The rules at the club that I play at even state that you're supposed to have like knee length shorts or a knee length skirt. That ain't happening. Haven't seen anybody try to enforce that yet. But it needs to like evolve. The sport needs to evolve. And I'm saying this as somebody who's new to the sport, who finds it intimidating because of all the rules and because it's a little bit snotty.

Kevin Mooney (10:27.994)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (10:28.099)
Some people are very snobby about their golf and it should be more fun. It should be more accessible.

Kevin Mooney (10:30.895)
Well...

Golf is a snobby sport, right? It's always been like that. It's kind of always been like the wealthy of the wealthy play golf. And that's why those rules are in place. I don't think that I can shift the entire culture of golf to bring in more ladies into this club. But we have talked a lot.

Cara Steinmann (10:58.67)
I'm probably not your, I'm not your target demographic probably for that club either. Cause like that's the kind of club that my cousin's husband would join. He just joined a private club out in Santa Rosa area where he lives. And it was like a $25,000 buy-in and then $500 a month or something like that. And he's a good golfer and he goes to wind down Wednesdays and hangs out with all the bros. And sometimes Christmas goes with him, but he's, he it's.

Kevin Mooney (11:07.898)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (11:15.364)
Yeah, that's close to what this is.

Kevin Mooney (11:25.902)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (11:27.958)
It is definitely like a male dominated sport and it makes it difficult for women to get into it.

Kevin Mooney (11:30.508)
Sure, but to kind of piggyback on what you said, that you're not the target audience, it's not true because you are a female golfer and you love the sport and you're passionate about it.

Who else is going to join a club other than that person? I mean, sure, there's the exclusivity of the club and you have to evaluate, I have the funds to pay for something like that or is that what I want? But if you are already somebody of means and you wanted to get into golf, like the mentality that you have is the exact same as that person. They just maybe have more cash to throw at it or something like that.

Cara Steinmann (11:54.7)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (12:19.568)
So the point is, how do these people bring in women golfers?

Cara Steinmann (12:24.012)
I think it would have to be motivated by community because I could join. I'm not a member of the club that I play at the league with or play with the league at. I'm not a member. I could join, but I also don't like I get that community for less money. I have to pay when I golf still it's not free, but I get a discount because I'm part of the league. But I also don't want to play at that club every time I golf. I want to go to the little minute. I want to go to

Kevin Mooney (12:32.293)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (12:43.45)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (12:52.278)
Right. So you like a little variety.

Cara Steinmann (12:54.454)
Yeah, like I'm going to Truckee tomorrow to play at this little nine hole course that my friends love and they might not want to go to, if I want to play with my friends who, you know, aren't members of the club, then I got to go other places. So it doesn't make sense for me to commit to one course. I don't know.

Kevin Mooney (13:13.85)
Mm-hmm.

No, I mean that makes sense and the community part is something that these guys talk about. It's just now how do you open that community up to a completely different sex and a different demographic, right? That's the hard part and I don't know. I mean the best that I can do at this point for what I'm getting paid to do is put the message out there that you are welcome here and this thing is also for you but

Yeah, it sounds like it's very much.

Cara Steinmann (13:50.7)
I mean, I've even thought of creating an app. mean, recently I've thought of creating like a ladies golf app where you can like find your friends, find people to golf with. I think some of them, did some research and there are some apps. It's like a dating app, right? But it's for finding golf partners. And there's only a couple of them that let you toggle on whether you're looking for female partners or not. So I think for people who wanna play more and get better at it.

Kevin Mooney (13:59.599)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (14:20.558)
or just play more and have more opportunity to play, that's the big barrier for me, is not having enough women to play with.

Kevin Mooney (14:27.49)
opportunity to play.

Kevin Mooney (14:33.648)
Yeah, interesting. Cool. Well, thanks for that insight.

Cara Steinmann (14:37.304)
I mean, maybe they should have like Women Wednesdays where Wednesday evenings it's ladies tea times only or something, but I don't know, that'd probably piss some people off.

Kevin Mooney (14:41.913)
Yeah.

Yeah, they do have some events and things like that. It's more about the attractant. What's the attractant for somebody? What do I say to them that they want to try to pierce that veil of the idea of an all-men's golf club? Don't get me wrong, this place isn't saying that we're an all-men's golf club. They're just trying to figure out ways to bring the women in. And I think

Cara Steinmann (15:11.384)
Well, yeah, it's a giant untapped market.

Kevin Mooney (15:14.136)
Yeah, for sure. But again, it goes back to how are you going to shift the entire culture of a sport to include? That's that's the overall part.

Cara Steinmann (15:24.792)
Well.

They could not make women wear collared shirts for one.

Kevin Mooney (15:30.05)
I think they shouldn't make anybody wear anything. That for me is always, I don't want to join your cool kids club.

Cara Steinmann (15:32.718)
It just rubs me the wrong way. It just rubs me the wrong way. Not only because I didn't own any collared shirts, I had to go buy collared shirts, which is just fucking annoying because I don't, I'm never going to wear them anywhere other than the golf course. And they're not cute. I don't look cute when I'm wearing my golf gear.

Kevin Mooney (15:48.816)
Isn't that cool?

Kevin Mooney (15:52.752)
Here's a piece of advice for all the dudes out there that wear golf shirts. It's not a good look either. Like, in public. You know, the guy that you're like, there's... This is a St. John's Bay...

Cara Steinmann (16:01.31)
you're wearing one right now.

Cara Steinmann (16:07.628)
You're wearing a polo shirt right now.

Kevin Mooney (16:11.504)
Well, polos not golf. This is, no, I'm kidding. This is a thrift store find. I mean a golf shirt, not just a collared shirt, because I wear collared shirts all the time. wear, well now I wear linen because my wife turned me on to linen and I'm like, oh, this is pretty, oh yeah, linen shirt daddy over here. It's a mess. Not just black Costco t-shirts anymore.

Cara Steinmann (16:21.324)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Steinmann (16:30.471)
my god, Kevin.

Wow.

Kevin Mooney (16:38.884)
But my point is everybody knows the golf dude who is going to play golf or just came off the golf course and he wears the golf shirt. And then when somebody dies, they wear the golf shirt to the funeral because that's their only nice shirt. Like we all know these guys. This is the golf bro that we're talking about here. We see him everywhere. So all I'm saying is a suggestion to them. Just, just don't, maybe don't. Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (17:00.749)
Yeah.

Just loosen up, loosen up that rule. Like let's evolve past that rule. It's kind of an arbitrary rule anyway. Why do we have to wear a collar? I mean, I know there, and I guess they could argue, well, go to the municipal course where there's no rules. Cause that little, we play black oak all the time. It's a nine hole course here in Auburn and I love, we love it. It's great. And there's no rules. You could wear your bikini and golf if you wanted to.

Kevin Mooney (17:19.376)
Sure. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (17:27.268)
Yeah. Hell yeah.

Kevin Mooney (17:34.49)
Well, yeah, don't know. Golf has always been a weird one. And I just remember being a kid in Rocklin playing at Lost, what was it? Lost Creek? Yeah, Lost Creek. Am I saying that right? Indian Creek. Brain fart. Playing there. And I just remember being like, there's no rules here. You can kind of do whatever you want. And then so growing up and being invited to

Cara Steinmann (17:50.25)
Indian Creek? Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (17:59.788)
Yeah, they don't care.

Kevin Mooney (18:04.622)
nicer courses and going and playing up in the new part of Rocklin was like, I don't like these people. I don't like this game anymore. So.

Cara Steinmann (18:12.876)
Yeah, it's and that's part of the problem with the sport I think is that it is it comes across very exclusive if you don't have all the right clothes and all the right gear and you know, I don't know I get it. I get it. But also like let's not be so snobby about it.

Kevin Mooney (18:29.774)
Yeah, it's just the reality is that's what they want. Those clubs want that exclusivity. They, I won't get into some of the politics that I've learned about it either, but they might pretend that they want a little bit of inclusivity, but they don't. They don't. They don't want it. It's not there. It's not going to happen.

Cara Steinmann (18:39.382)
Hmm.

Cara Steinmann (18:46.926)
Hmm.

Cara Steinmann (18:50.924)
Well, it's surprising that they even want to attract more females because it does seem like a very much old boys club as a sport anyway. And they don't really want the ladies. Like they don't really, I feel like they don't really care if we actually feel comfortable because they don't really care if we're there or not.

Kevin Mooney (18:57.06)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (19:06.904)
Nope. Setting my client aside and any of their things, because they don't necessarily fit the mold, but the culture of the sport as a whole, they just don't. They don't give a shit. They don't want anyone. They don't even want somebody who looks like them to join the club. They only want the people who they know in the club. Like it's that tight knit. So they're not even like sexist or racist. It's not about the pigment of your skin. They're like,

I don't know you, so I don't want you here. Like that's how narrow that stuff is. It's really weird. Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (19:41.344)
Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, it kind of bums me out because there's a there's a club up in Truckee that I want to play. It's like a par three. It's called Lahontan. But it's as far as I can tell, it's private. You have to be a member or you have to be invited by a member. And that's just I mean, that's a bummer.

Kevin Mooney (20:00.324)
Yeah. Well, hey, it's America. You don't have to golf there. We don't have to be friends with them. Fuck those people. Yeah. Really?

Cara Steinmann (20:04.789)
I guess not, but I want to play a par three course. I there's no good ones around here. No, there's none. That's the only one around the area that I can find.

Kevin Mooney (20:16.784)
There's gotta be a lot of courses around there, like especially with the growth of all that stuff out in Lincoln and how Rocklin Roseville grew together, like, I don't know.

Cara Steinmann (20:19.662)
Probably.

Cara Steinmann (20:24.706)
You'd think.

You'd think, mean, there's golf courses galore, just not like a par three course.

Kevin Mooney (20:31.95)
Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, shit.

Cara Steinmann (20:34.026)
Anyway, it's not where I thought I'd find myself at this age. I did not think I would pick up the sport and enjoy it as much as I am. It's kind of, I think, annoying my husband a little bit.

Kevin Mooney (20:41.145)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (20:50.224)
Well, especially if he's not like super into it and you are then I could see how it's like. All right, let's golf again.

Cara Steinmann (20:58.548)
If he could hit straight, he'd be way more into it. But he gets so mad. I think I told you we ended up, he got so mad he threw his driver in a tree at the last time we played down in Lincoln. And then he had to throw another club up there to try to get it down and that one got stuck. And then another one and we ended up with four clubs up in this like 20 feet up in this oak tree. Until the guy finally came behind us, like we took so fucking long.

Kevin Mooney (21:13.103)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (21:22.288)
So good.

Cara Steinmann (21:27.372)
that he finally came up to us and he was like, everything okay? And he had a ball retriever and Jeremy was able to stand up on the cart with the ball retriever and like snag the handle and yank them all down. But it was like temper tantrum, lead. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just lay up.

Kevin Mooney (21:40.368)
It's just a 10 cup moment, you know?

Yeah. Just lay up. Nope. Snap all of his clubs. Yeah. so what about like outside of golf and all of that and, Parker being not even a teenager anymore, a grown adult. I don't think I have a grasp on what you do in terms of a career. I know that you're podcasting. I know you're that you're doing stuff, but are you still doing

Cara Steinmann (21:48.246)
Nope, Yep.

Cara Steinmann (22:00.162)
Basically an adult. So weird.

Kevin Mooney (22:14.934)
Any copywriting and selling all of that stuff? No.

Cara Steinmann (22:16.462)
No, God, no, I got out of marketing. I had a really weird like 2020 where I was sort of falling out of, I had fallen out of love with marketing, but I didn't really want to admit it because I had built this like consultancy and I was making money and I was profitable and I was doing marketing and consulting around content marketing and I hated it, but I didn't like really verbalize that yet.

I hadn't really verbalized that yet and I didn't really know what else to do. So I sort of shifted into SEO consulting for a little while and I had this business coach that was trying to convince me to just go hard on the SEO consulting because you could make a lot of money doing it. But I don't, I hate it. I fucking, I just fucking hate it. And as it turns out, this is why I got into, I do a lot of, so now to answer your question, I host online communities, paid membership communities. And some of them are like,

Kevin Mooney (22:57.486)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (23:12.234)
mastermind style communities. But I also do strengths coaching. I'm a CliftonStrengths coach. So I do leadership coaching with women entrepreneurs. And I love the CliftonStrengths because when I took it in 2020, when I was trying to figure out, I was like, okay, clearly I'm not on the right path here. I don't know what to do with my career or my life, but this ain't it. I'm miserable. And I felt like I wasn't even really that good at it, but you you learn to do something and you kind of like, you take a job at an agency and then you learn to do all the things in the agency.

Kevin Mooney (23:18.938)
Mmm.

Cara Steinmann (23:41.922)
And then pretty soon, sure, yeah, I can do analytics. I can do Facebook ads. can do, I mean, I was pretty good at writing. So when I started in marketing, I was doing a lot of content writing. did fitness content writing specifically, and I was really good at it. But I fell out of love with that. you know, I'm not built to deliver things to people. Like a service-based business is not great for me.

mostly just because of my personality. And when I did my CliftonStrengths, I realized that I had zero execution skills in my top 10. I'm all big picture strategy, connectedness is my number one, very people oriented. But I'm not one those people who loves to have a list and loves to check things off my list. That's not me.

Kevin Mooney (24:11.663)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (24:35.694)
So it helped me understand a lot of why I struggled with that type of business before with like the service-based business where you are doing the same thing on retainer every month for this person and delivering things on a timeline and just solving problems all the time. It wasn't a great fit for me. So now I really enjoy what I'm doing now and I love bringing women together and I get to introduce all kinds of incredible people to each other. I like, yeah, I like it.

Kevin Mooney (24:35.705)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (25:07.224)
I'm interested in that thing because I'm starting to dabble in.

activities outside of marketing and branding and brand and you know, I've joined a couple of communities and I get that the quick easy cash grab is like build a quick community, sell a course, sell some digital products, make a bunch of money, you know, and then be forgotten at some point in time. And that's not what you're doing, but I'm

I'm like starting to dabble in that. What does this stuff look like and how are people doing it? And if I were to go in that direction, how could I do it not in this gross way that people are doing it? But the reality is what can I offer? I've got, I don't know, I've said a different number. 10 years, 12 years, 15 years worth of experience and knowledge in my head of the industry and clients and.

Cara Steinmann (25:51.628)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (26:12.772)
consumers, all of that stuff, but I can't sit down and make a product that I would feel is valuable to those types of people. Maybe I could if I was like, well, you just have to do this, this, this, and this, and I don't give them any explanation about the nuances of those five topics. But it seems like you're kind of in this niche. I guess where I was going with it, I don't know how to be a coach.

I don't know how to be a consultant. I don't know how to do any of those things. So building a community for myself and then selling something through that seems really, really challenging. And then on top of that, you still have to use your marketing skills to grow your own community. So you're still kind of doing it all. You're just maybe doing it for yourself at that point.

Cara Steinmann (27:01.256)
It feels different marketing for yourself. And the way that Ravel has grown, Ravel is the name of the community and it's a community of women entrepreneurs. It's grown very organically. It's been a really slow, slow referral based growth, which is how I prefer, like I'm much better at relationship marketing. you know, two, two of the hundred members came in through a podcast that I did. They heard me on a podcast and

they came into the community that way. Every single other person was either someone I met personally and invited to join us or was referred by a member who existed already. And I'm not selling anything in there. I'm not selling coaching services in there. I do end up coaching some of the women because we end up...

in a relationship where they're like, really need to learn. I need to figure out what's wrong with, I'm not enjoying my business. Something's wrong here. And I'll be like, well, let's do your CliftonStrengths. Let's see what's going on here. So I do end up working in that capacity, but it's, I'm not, I didn't build a product and create a community to sell because I had all this knowledge. I created a space. I look at it this way. I'm holding space in a very specific shape and people pay to access that.

Kevin Mooney (27:54.436)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Steinmann (28:12.856)
There are other people in there. want access to the women. want access to the community. At first, I thought it was really mostly the referrals that they were in there for, but it turns out women entrepreneurs feel really lonely and we feel like we're very isolated and we don't have a lot of community. So I created the community very intentionally based on my core values, like freedom and authenticity and connection and inclusivity. And we're

Kevin Mooney (28:24.878)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Steinmann (28:42.124)
We're all really very much alike. We all share some of these core values together, kindness. it serves, people pay for things other than products and courses. They pay for access to a community, to a space. And all I really do is hold the space. I facilitate. So in the masterminds, I participate in the masterminds, I'm, and I do like, I do some coaching in there, but it's not in an official capacity. I'm showing up to these mastermind calls.

to hold space and everybody shows up and I facilitate the mastermind. I keep time and I make sure that everybody's getting their fair chance to talk and everything like that. And I just kind of like, I hold the vibe, I'm the vibe checker to make sure that everybody's having a good time and getting what they need and getting connected with each other. So a lot of what I do is, you know who you should know, you gotta meet this person here, connect with them, I make an email introduction. So.

Kevin Mooney (29:24.495)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (29:37.764)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (29:38.414)
And that kind of led to me wanting to build this app that I'm building called Maven Match, which should be out in August. I've had lots of slowdowns and struggles building this tool, but it's a networking tool for women entrepreneurs because there are a lot of these little small communities out there. And some of them are coaching communities and some of them are networking communities and they all serve a little bit of a different purpose, right? But we can't all be in all the communities. So it does limit our ability to meet new people.

So my kind of a plan was let me put this app together and I'll take what I know about how people connect with each other, not just from psychology, personality and core values and we'll put this app together that will pair people with each other so that they can meet women from other communities that don't necessarily belong in the communities that they're in.

but they can still connect with each other. So that's.

Kevin Mooney (30:37.04)
So do they have to know everything about their personality types and their clifton, or do they get that once they get in?

Cara Steinmann (30:43.124)
No, they can upload their Clifton. So there's a lot of AI built into it, right? So you can upload your Clifton. can tell the tool what your Myers-Briggs is, and that'll take that into consideration. But I also built in the ocean temperament test, because there's a correlation between core values and your temperament. And so it's matching people based on core values, but also whether or not you're a good referral partner.

Are you a complimentary service provider to somebody? It's taking into consideration what you do, who you do it for. then like, so if you're a marketer who serves attorneys and there's a bookkeeper who also primarily serves attorneys or like law offices, that's gonna make you guys really good referral partners. So if your core values are aligned enough that you would get along really well easily, we're gonna pair you together so that you can get to know each other because really.

Everybody's busy, nobody wants to stop and take the time to make an introduction or refer somebody business unless they like them. You have to like somebody to want to refer them business. So at the very base of that relationship has to be like this sort of affinity for one another, right? And then you just happen to have an opportunity to refer one another. Look, Melissa, our mutual friend Melissa, she and I have referred business back and forth because we're friends and we happen to work in the same industry and we had a lot of opportunity to do that.

Kevin Mooney (31:45.52)
100%.

Kevin Mooney (31:57.38)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (32:04.054)
At the end of the day, we really like each other too and we want the other person to win.

Kevin Mooney (32:07.758)
Yeah, that's cool. mean, there's a lot, there's a lot going on in there. I do like the idea that you're creating this, this place, not for the purpose to pump people through the funnel and have them buy your digital products. You kind of open up that space. You allow them to connect and talk and bullshit and then

as a whole put on an event and then you aren't doing anything in that event. I'm not saying that as a slight. I'm saying that like you're not hosting it. I don't have this workshop. Follow these five steps and then I'm on the hook for the outcomes of what you take away from this or what you do in your business and that's the part that I can't build a product good enough.

these types of outcomes or be on the hook for that. It's part of the reason that I'm struggling in the creative space that I'm in right now. And I deal with this in sales calls all the time. I just had one a couple of weeks ago where I asked for a lot of money to basically do strategy up front. And that was not only for them, but it was for me to be able to do my job effectively. And they were like,

Cara Steinmann (33:03.256)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (33:32.364)
you want me to spend a bunch of money up front and then do something down the line with you that's going to cost more money to do. And I was like, that's exactly right. But they said, can you tell me what an ROI would look like? And I had just done an ROI exercise for another client, right? The golf course, the golf club. And so I had an ROI number in my head, but it's so high that I couldn't say that without.

them being like, that's total bullshit, that's not even real. Or having them think that that's what they could expect from our engagements. Like, no, we have to understand that I can have an ROI like that with a company who works well with me, who their product or services are in demand, people want them and you show up at the right place at the right time. Like there's a lot of factors that have to happen for it.

And so it's just this internal struggle. Basically I told the guy, can't guarantee an ROI. I never will. And if anybody else does, they're lying to you. And you should run as fast as you can from them. And he ultimately didn't hire me, which is fine. That's what the fit check is there for. But I'm just saying that I struggle with that in this line of work. Because it's so

weird and fluffy and nuanced and I've worked with a hundred people over the last 10 years and I can't tell you how many of them actually got an ROI from working with me and that's a personal struggle. It hurts my freaking soul. But was it my fault? No. Was it their fault? Maybe.

Cara Steinmann (35:11.468)
I know it's so,

Kevin Mooney (35:21.454)
I don't know if it was their fault. It could have just been the product of the service in the community and they didn't like it. But it doesn't mean that you had a bad business or I did bad creative. It doesn't mean any of that stuff. So it's just this, it's that same sticky point that you are talking about that led you to where you're at with your communities. And I like how you have structured that thinking in a long-term way where if I just

Allow these folks to come in, they can pay for access for it. There is this space in here that we can all kind of talk and figure it out and refer and run through these masterminds where there's no center of attention. There's no guru at the top of that. I really, really like that, that you're doing. And I remember when you first started it, it didn't feel that way. I remember getting an invite and I was like, nope, I'm not.

Cara Steinmann (36:12.846)
No, that was a different community. That was a different community. I... Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (36:15.716)
Got it. Well, I remember that community and I remember being like, nope, not gonna play in this sandbox.

Cara Steinmann (36:24.558)
Ravel was already going and that was the quantum, was it the quantum collective? I don't know. I created another one that was trying to pair, that tried to pair like agencies with contractors in the marketing space because they would be vetted and you kind of knew who you were dealing with and you could hire a contractor to do something but not necessarily have to hire them for in your agency in-house. You get specialists and that didn't work out.

Kevin Mooney (36:50.19)
Got it. Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (36:53.174)
I've experimented with a ton of stuff. tried to do retreats last year a couple of times. It's everything's always an experiment and it's always a moving target. But with Ravel, the promise is not a product. It's not an outcome necessarily other than you get to come into this safe space and I'm vetting all these women. This is a safe space where everybody's already been vetted. So in a way.

In a way, I was able to find out what I do really well and create a community around that. And I'm good at creating spaces that make people feel safe. Like Jeremy always tells me that my superpower is that people just tell me shit. And I think, I think it's annoying. Sometimes it's annoying because people are crying all the time or they're telling me stuff they wouldn't tell their therapist. And I'm like, Jesus Christ, how did I get here? But I think it's because I'm, I don't know, for some reason people feel comfortable telling me stuff and

Kevin Mooney (37:20.207)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (37:29.136)
It's true. I've told you shit.

Cara Steinmann (37:46.186)
So that must mean that they feel safe. And so in this space, in this Ravel community, it's a closed community. It's not open to just anybody. You have to apply. You have to get through me to get in. And so that makes it a little bit exclusive, but also you don't have to be, the criteria is just don't be an asshole. And so we've never had any problems with like people being jerks to one another. I don't have to moderate anything.

Kevin Mooney (38:04.73)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (38:10.21)
I don't even really have to create any content in there because the women create their own content and they're asking each other questions and having conversations and sharing things about their lives. so it's really, it's a different concept than selling something like a tangible course. Gesundheit, it's more of like sharing just a space. Yeah, it's a monthly or a yearly commute. And then the masterminds cost more. Those are a higher price.

Kevin Mooney (38:23.632)
Thank you. Yeah. And is there a monthly monthly fee to be in the community?

Kevin Mooney (38:39.672)
Yeah, I mean, I think it's really cool. I honestly wasn't sure what you were doing. didn't know if you were still kind of writing on the side or doing SEO or blogs or anything like that. I kind of didn't know that you were full time on that thing. But again, it's been a couple years since we've really dove into these things.

Cara Steinmann (38:40.152)
So yeah, I mean.

Cara Steinmann (38:58.03)
Yeah, it's.

Cara Steinmann (39:01.9)
Yeah, I completely lost my ability to write. I don't know if it's perimenopause or if my ADHD is just off the charts, but I used to be able to sit down and write a blog post in like 30 minutes and have it be amazing. And now I sit down and I've just, I would so much rather talk to people than write anymore.

Kevin Mooney (39:23.288)
Yeah, I understand that. I used to be able to switch between websites and marketing campaigns and SEO and all of that sort of stuff. And now I sat down last week to start a website design and I was like, wait, how do I do this? Like I think it just comes with burnout. You just lose everything.

I still know all the technical terms. still know how to do this stuff. Technically, it just takes a lot longer for me to kind of get going and you know, burnout hit for me. And unfortunately, rather than making a good shift like you did, I'm kind of still in the like the zone that I'm in right now. And again, that's fine, but it's just.

Cara Steinmann (40:03.182)
So.

Kevin Mooney (40:17.776)
I'm exploring concepts on how I can get out of that and just go back to talking like we're doing here.

Cara Steinmann (40:22.4)
It's been messy. It's been really messy for me and it's been slow, real slow. And I don't, I don't even know if I'm, if I've ended up where I need to be. Like I'm, like I said, I'm getting ready to launch this app. hope that it's something that works out. hope that I enjoy it, you know, running that part of a company that has, I mean, I'm not a coder. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. So there's going to be some investment there too. I don't know. I still don't know what I'm doing most of the time. Right. But

What I'm hearing you say is that you're in this messy middle right now too, where you're burned out on marketing and you don't want to do this anymore. But then the question becomes, what do I do?

Kevin Mooney (40:58.904)
Yeah. Well, I don't, I don't know how much I told you in our last chat, but when, when I had Mabel, when Marchelle had Mabel, when I, when I went like, you know, patted her on the back and was like, great work, mom. when all of that happened, my testosterone tanked.

Cara Steinmann (41:23.214)
I didn't know that.

Kevin Mooney (41:25.028)
like tanked tanked and there was probably a lot of reasons. The end of 23, I closed down, we closed down Hound as an agency. We roll into 24, Mabel was born January 8th. Six months after she was born, I slipped on the stairs. Did I tell you this story? Slipped on the stairs, she busted her head, she had surgery, she's great, she's fine. But I wasn't.

Cara Steinmann (41:33.709)
Yep.

Cara Steinmann (41:46.05)
Yeah, this is.

Cara Steinmann (41:53.038)
So scary.

Kevin Mooney (41:54.17)
but I wasn't working, sort of went back into work as the year went on, but it was more like, I'm open to taking a website job now. I just closed down my agency, I'm doing websites again. So basically what I'm saying is I was lost. In that whole process, the stress through the roof, my testosterone tanked into the hundreds down from

Cara Steinmann (42:12.044)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (42:22.928)
some men my age or anywhere from four or 500 up to like 700. But I was at like a 75 year olds level of testosterone. And what happened with that was a lot of brain fog and I was getting sick often, like twice a month I would get sick, whether it was a cold or a flu, a stomach bug.

Cara Steinmann (42:34.621)
wow.

Cara Steinmann (42:44.782)
Hmm.

Kevin Mooney (42:51.578)
I went from a stomach bug to presumably COVID to pneumonia. And it was like, it was like a six or seven week span of me not leaving the bed at all. And I never really recovered from that. There was just so much brain fog and my body was in pain. It would ache. And I was still trying to work out through this and I couldn't recover from the workouts. And I wasn't getting any sort of gains in, in, that zone, in that department.

Cara Steinmann (42:57.272)
Jesus.

Kevin Mooney (43:21.456)
So I've been lost and confused. And there was some clarity coming in at 25. That's why I launched this, personal brand, and fell back into the routine of the agency, which felt really nice doing very productive work, wonderful clients. You're still dealing with some of the problems that any marketer comes with the territory.

Cara Steinmann (43:45.922)
come with the territory.

Kevin Mooney (43:50.266)
But the entire time I've just told myself, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to build another stupid website. Like you don't even know what to put on your damn website. Why do I have to come up with this for you and then have you bitch at me about it? You know, all the things that happen in agency life, but I've just been slowly, slowly exploring it. And I think I mentioned to you my short term goal with

Cara Steinmann (44:06.776)
That's so true.

Kevin Mooney (44:19.194)
this podcast is sharpening those tools again, getting back to that point that I was right before all of this happened when the agency was at its peak and we were selling six figure projects. Like that was fun. The problem at that time was as much fun as it was, I was still doing a lot of the work and it was selling, it was project management, it was creative and strategy and then managing

the team members. So when I started KevinMooney.com, I thought this will be great because I can do it myself and I don't have to rely on anybody else over here to do it. I'm just going to do it. Here I am doing sales and strategy and project management all over again dealing with the same problems. I just can't get out of this gross cycle that I'm in. I'm done. So doing this is to sharpen the skills and then hopefully figure out

Cara Steinmann (45:08.396)
Yep.

Kevin Mooney (45:18.714)
whether it's a community or maybe I'm really good at making content. Maybe people really like hearing what I have to say and I can get back to this thing that feels really natural to me. You know my CliftonStrengths, you know my personality type, you know maybe something about my human design and you combine all of those and you look at them, this is what I do the best. It's just talk and free flow and go and there's tidbits and there's insights.

That's where I want to be. But I also don't know if anyone wants to listen or pay me for anything. But I'm inspired by the thing that you've done in just giving it a little bit of space and not kind of going direct to that sale. I don't want to do that.

Cara Steinmann (46:07.704)
Thank you. I think there's a little bit of...

Kevin Mooney (46:10.96)
you

Cara Steinmann (46:15.384)
There's a little bit of pressure to always have a plan and to know where you're going. And that is harmful, I think, especially in the middle of our lives where we don't really know where we need to go sometimes. like you're doing right now, giving yourself some space to play, to do something that you know you love having conversations with people, you know you have something valuable to contribute to the conversation. So just put it out there in the world and see what happens. It could blow up. Or if not, maybe you'll talk to somebody who helps you.

Kevin Mooney (46:40.047)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (46:44.216)
get an epiphany and figure out what you should be doing. Have you asked Chat GPT what you should do with your life based on your human design and your, you should do it. Just with CliftonStrengths, I've thrown some of my clients CliftonStrengths in there and been like, hey, here's the situation. She's been doing this, she's miserable, here's her CliftonStrengths. What should she be doing based on her strengths?

Kevin Mooney (46:47.92)
100%.

Kevin Mooney (46:54.138)
Probably I should open up a tab and see what it says.

Cara Steinmann (47:11.404)
And the answer's in there somewhere. It's just like, got to figure out which way you want to aim it, right? Like I think too, at this point in my life, it's important to me to do something purposeful and meaningful. Like I want to be moving toward something better in the world. I want to do something that makes the world better than it used to be. Maybe it's a legacy thing. Maybe it's me getting old and wanting to leave my mark on the world or something. But I remember a lot of times when I was working in marketing, just feeling like,

Kevin Mooney (47:15.983)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (47:39.522)
Like how is selling this, how is selling sorority merch making the world a better place? Like how am I contributing? And you you end up with clients that you're getting, you're getting paid to help them sell a product that maybe you don't even believe in or that that is even sus a little bit. Although I guess I'm not allowed to say sus anymore. My son informed me that sus is out. I'm not supposed to say that anyway. It's cringe. It's cringe. But you.

Kevin Mooney (48:05.1)
Suss is done. All right. It's cringe. yeah. It's a whole new language. I don't know yet.

Cara Steinmann (48:09.262)
I'm so off, I'm so off the back.

Kevin Mooney (48:14.586)
See, that's another reason that I have to get out of marketing because I can't keep up with the generations as they go, right? And the really good marketers of the world, they have their fingers on the pulse of that stuff. I just, I don't, I don't have it there.

Cara Steinmann (48:21.121)
generations.

Cara Steinmann (48:30.414)
Part of the problem with marketing too is I'm tired of being sold to. And it makes, it's a disconnect when I'm tired of, I'm tired of social media in my face all the time. I'm tired of the pressure. That was one of the biggest problems I was having with the marketing thing was that I hate social media. I don't want to post. I don't want to like, when Jeremy and I went on our anniversary trip, we said, yo, let's take some pictures. Let's take lots of pictures and we can post about it on social and stuff. Neither one of us posted a single thing on Instagram about, we just left for the week and.

Kevin Mooney (48:34.585)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (48:46.842)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (48:59.318)
Nobody knew what we were doing. And I was like, yeah, I was like, why should I have to post? Like know I'm having a great anniversary trip. Why does everybody else need to know that I'm having a great anniversary trip?

Kevin Mooney (49:00.974)
Yeah, isn't that great?

Kevin Mooney (49:09.615)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (49:13.98)
100%. Yeah. I, you know, I, I've always, there's a lot of words in, marketing, a lot of buzzwords, a lot of words that people say, and I'm pretty allergic to them. They drive me nuts. And one of those not trying to offend you is like purpose driven, anything just like, yep, heard it, got it. Check. You just want to kind of identify with other people who do purpose driven stuff. But the reality is, I'm going to share this story with you.

Cara Steinmann (49:38.36)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (49:44.08)
It got me the most excited and the most happy that I've been in the last five years of doing the work that I do. And it just makes me think, oh, I actually am a purpose-driven marketer. So as much as I hated it, I probably am that. The quick story is I have a DPC doctor, direct primary care. Are you familiar with that?

Cara Steinmann (50:02.882)
Get that though.

Cara Steinmann (50:14.254)
I've never heard the term before. I know what a primary care physician is, but.

Kevin Mooney (50:18.414)
Right. So DPC is direct primary care. It's basically a membership based medical practice, right? And so you pay in as a member and you get access to the physicians. And I joined four or five years ago and it's just kind of a real small local practice. And she brought me in nine months ago.

Cara Steinmann (50:23.671)
yeah, okay. Yep.

Kevin Mooney (50:48.56)
to do a small side project for her. And I just kind of kept at her a little bit and was like, hey, I to be a part of the bigger picture here. And long story short, I sold her on a fractional CMO role. So I have a really nice base and she's trusting me to revamp her company from the ground up, digitally and physically. So we ran Brand Strategy.

and I went through some messaging exercises and target audience and all of that fun stuff. Yesterday, I presented her new brand identity to her and her and her assistant cried during the presentation and I was super emotional. Maybe it has something to do with the supplements that I'm taking to bring my testosterone up, but I also got very emotional and I was on a high all day yesterday and all through the evening. came home.

told Marcelle about it, she got emotional about it. She saw me making the logo and she was like, this is so perfect and so great for them. And I tied it together in a really nice brand story and made it long-term focus so that this is something you can hand to your kids. she, very emotional. And I just thought to myself, this is the only engagement that I ever want again in this.

marketing zone. I don't want another client who wants me to just sell pickleball rackets. I don't want to do that. I don't care about pickleball. I don't care about your rackets. This is something that's really cool and really meaningful. And I guess I'm a purpose driven marketer at this point.

Cara Steinmann (52:32.28)
You're, I hate to tell you Kevin, but I think you're purpose driven. I think it's more like, and maybe it's not even purpose driven. Maybe it's just values driven. Like you care about that company and you're obviously really aligned and you believe in what they're doing. And it feels really good to get behind a company and contribute to its success when you feel really invested in the company, right? And the people. So you're aligned really well with that company. It's not even like,

Kevin Mooney (52:55.759)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (53:01.784)
Don't be embarrassed by that. That's fantastic.

Kevin Mooney (53:03.344)
No, I don't think I've been embarrassed. It's just something I've never said out loud, right? Cause I always scoff at these buzzwords. Oh my God, this or that, whatever, who cares? Just go back to work. That's always like been my mentality. Yeah, it's, it's a real thing. Uh, I think the biggest thing with that engagement is the transparency from the beginning, you know,

Cara Steinmann (53:13.934)
You're softening with age. I love it.

Cara Steinmann (53:27.086)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (53:30.576)
This is her practice. She started it. She owns it. She runs it. She's 100 % owner. She's just been transparent through this entire thing. I'll ask her for this amount of money. She'll say, I don't have that much money. Can you take this money? Yes, I'll take that money. Can you do this? No, I cannot do this. She's like, OK, how about this? Right? It's just the right level of transparent.

engagements that I'm looking for. And, you know, there's, there's other clients that I have currently right now that you find out six months down the road, who really is pulling the strings when you had these conversations upfront, like, Hey, I don't deal with, with boards. I'm not going to deal with them. not going to come in and push me around and tell me what to do. yeah, that's not a problem. And then six months down the road, well, the board would like to see this. And you're like,

Cara Steinmann (54:10.06)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (54:26.8)
So you were lying to me. So the transparency was not there. I just, I realized that transparency, again, one of those buzzwords, is something that is just required. And you have to lay it all out on the line in order for us to really work together. When you say your budget is X, but it's really Y, like why are we playing this game? How could you expect anyone to have trust?

or produce quality work for you if you're like that. This isn't just in the creative space, right? It's in any part of our lives. I'm just in at transparency level 130 or I'm not, right? It's that full body yes or full body no that people talk about.

Cara Steinmann (54:58.616)
Well...

Cara Steinmann (55:03.0)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (55:11.447)
Yep.

Well, I think, you you mentioned the word transparency. That's attached to a word that has a lot of people. People feel like the word authenticity is played out and is a buzzword. But when I did one of the big things I did when I was having my meltdown in 2020 and 2021 and what do I do with my life was I realized that I didn't I had never identified my core values. And I know that people also hate core values these days because it's so cliche to, you know,

lead with your core values. But honestly, if you've never sat down and really identified what drives you in the world, like what drives your behavior, it's your core values. It's like, realized I was trying to figure out like what to do and the values drive which direction for me to go. And one of my core values as it turns out is authenticity. But if you look at the actual meaning of authenticity, it's comprised of three things, transparency, vulnerability,

Kevin Mooney (55:54.106)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (56:12.686)
and fuck what's the third one.

Vulnerability, transparency, and...

Kevin Mooney (56:17.21)
Come on, Jamie, where you at? Look it up, Jamie.

Cara Steinmann (56:25.49)
god damn it, this is gonna fucking piss me off. Now I gotta look it up. you can cut this out.

Kevin Mooney (56:28.368)
You gotta look it up now.

Kevin Mooney (56:32.624)
I mean, that's interesting because I do hate the word authenticity. And I think the reason that I hate it is that everybody says it, but they don't know the meaning of it. And just like how you're doing it right now, you're kind of breaking it down saying that it's not one thing. It's comprised of three things. There you go.

Cara Steinmann (56:53.386)
Integrity. Vulnerability, transparency, and integrity. And integrity doesn't mean you're, it's not,

It's not the word integrity. We kind of take that to mean like morals, but integrity just means wholeness. Like you're coming with your whole person. You're not shaving off pieces of yourself to fit the situation. That's not authentic. If you're not being transparent, you're not being authentic. And if you're not being vulnerable enough to show everybody what's going on with you and to show up as yourself, that's not authentic either. So I think for me, like I spent a lot of time in marketing missing those components.

Kevin Mooney (57:19.961)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (57:30.127)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (57:35.394)
working in marketing, it sucks. You have to shave off little bits of yourself and you have to like, it's manipulative. Marketing feels really manipulative sometimes. So.

Kevin Mooney (57:39.546)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (57:45.744)
Yeah, not just not just doing it, but being a part of it, I think for me, right? Like working with other marketing colleagues. You're just like you're just giving me what other people are doing, right? And you call yourself a marketer. You're not really authentic in what you do and the version that you do. I remember when we were trying to get something we were working together, Hound and Kara.

Cara Steinmann (58:09.934)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (58:15.096)
rights or something like that. And you were kind of giving us stuff, like examples of your work. And we're like, no, no, no, no. And then one day you got fed up and you wrote us a letter and we were like, that's the fucking letter that that's exactly what we want. And you, I mean, you crush, still think about that moment all the time. And I'm not saying that you're a bad person or a bad marketer, a bad copywriter. It was just like, you kind of fell into a group.

Cara Steinmann (58:27.367)
yeah.

Cara Steinmann (58:32.931)
You

Kevin Mooney (58:43.172)
and you were just kind of giving what you thought we wanted and it was a slice of you. It wasn't all of you until you hit that letter to us and I was like, that's perfect. It was so good. Yeah. But that's the thing is like, it.

Cara Steinmann (58:54.414)
was funny. That was funny.

Cara Steinmann (59:00.642)
But that's what it feels like when you're working in a space that you don't feel good in. You're like, you're trying to figure out what people want from you. What do you want from me? You can't just show up and give them what you are, because they might not buy it. But that's ultimately, that's what you have to do, right? Like when you're talking about bringing on clients, if you're gonna keep doing this for a little while, you have to be just as picky as they are. You have to come show up with your whole self and say,

Kevin Mooney (59:08.741)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (59:12.912)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (59:22.66)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (59:26.624)
I only work with these kinds of clients that have transparency, that do something in a vein that I can respect, that I want to get behind. And if you don't fit all these criteria, I'm not working with you. I won't give you my talents. I don't care how much you pay me.

Kevin Mooney (59:41.456)
Yeah, and I'm guilty because I've been hungry, right? At some point we've got to keep the lights on so you take shit that you don't really want to take. But to your point, I have to do that moving forward. I've done pieces of that, but I haven't done all of that. And I think now is the time to start saying that type of stuff. I'm not working with anyone that doesn't do this, this, this, and this.

Cara Steinmann (59:51.533)
Yep.

Kevin Mooney (01:00:10.288)
or says this, this and this or acts this way or shows, shows me that they're capable of these types of things because of the reason that I just shared about the, DPC that, that, that person has just said, I have all of my trust in you and I've been able to just have fun with it. And it made them cry. Like that's a wild testimonial right there. I made a client cry, not out of

Cara Steinmann (01:00:22.424)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (01:00:39.904)
anger or sadness like out of pure joy. That is a wonderful thing to achieve.

Cara Steinmann (01:00:45.42)
You know what else that is? That's the kind of client that refers you to other clients. And birds of a feather flock together. So chances are if she's referring you to somebody that she knows, they're probably a lot like her in some way. And you're gonna enjoy working with them too.

Kevin Mooney (01:00:49.476)
For sure.

Kevin Mooney (01:00:57.978)
Yeah, yeah. But that's the stuff that I want if I'm going to keep doing this, right? I want that in my life. I need somebody to say, I'm going to hire you and pay you your wages to have fun. And if someone wants to pay me to produce something, I have to say no, because I don't like just producing things. Yes, I produce things, but

Cara Steinmann (01:01:05.006)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (01:01:23.886)
It has to mean something.

Kevin Mooney (01:01:27.856)
And even set meaning aside, you have to allow me to have the freedom. The meaning will come. It will 100 % come because if I believe in you and your product or your company and your services or whatever, the meaning just kind of develops in itself. Sure, the meaning is always great upfront, but then I'm going to snuff off 99.99 % of the people that I would work with. So I have to leave a little bit of a sliver, let the meaning kind of develop.

Cara Steinmann (01:01:41.73)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Steinmann (01:01:52.792)
Yeah.

Well, I think, I mean, the biggest thing that you're saying is that you need to show up and work the way that you work best, which is you have to, people have to trust you. When I was still doing a little bit of marketing, finally, towards the end there, I started telling people, once I started figuring out what the problem was, I realized that I was most of the problem because I'll show up and I will change my mind. You could count on it.

Kevin Mooney (01:02:02.512)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:02:22.778)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (01:02:23.02)
You can count on, like, so I would finally, I would have to say to clients, okay, here's the deal. If we're gonna enter into this retainer agreement, it may not be the same thing every month, because I may get in there and realize that you need this next month instead of this. And so I don't work with clients who are really rigid and need like a plan for six months that we have to stick to, because that's not gonna work for me. I'm going to change my mind. I'm gonna gather information along the way, and I'm gonna come to different conclusions.

Kevin Mooney (01:02:46.511)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (01:02:52.172)
and we may have to change course. And if I'm working with somebody who's really, you know, plan oriented and really like.

Kevin Mooney (01:02:54.085)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (01:03:01.838)
God, what's the temperament that... Conscientious. Really conscientious people like a plan and they like, you know, let's stick to it, let's finish it, let's do what we say we're gonna do. And that's not me. I'm taking information as we go and if we need to pivot, I hate the word pivot too, but I'm gonna say it. If we need to change tack, we're going to.

Kevin Mooney (01:03:19.632)
Sure, fair. Yeah, yeah, I totally get it. mean, to be honest with that golf club, I'm in the same situation. We made a plan. We stuck to that plan. But when it came down to the specific creative or the specific tactical implementation of that creative, I was like, no, we have to deviate.

We have to kind of shift and pivot a little bit here. I don't think that that's the right message or the right style to put out there. And so when I did that shift, was like, it blew up this. What, why is this? No, no, no. mean, blew up between us as a relationship like bad. No, no, to be fair, they agreed to go with my new adjusted plan.

Cara Steinmann (01:04:02.274)
awesome.

Cara Steinmann (01:04:07.054)
it didn't blow up like good, it blew up bad.

Kevin Mooney (01:04:17.986)
And it did blow up in a good way, meaning they had more leads than they know what to do with. They almost said, we need to stop and turn this thing off. But the relationship was like a little bit tarnished and I was getting a lot of pressure from higher ups being like, this isn't what we talked about. This isn't the plan. And I'm like, I understand that, but I have a feeling that it needs to go this direction, that whatever. And.

Cara Steinmann (01:04:20.118)
in a good way.

Cara Steinmann (01:04:33.848)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:04:48.494)
their credit they they stuck with me and so I do appreciate that. The reality is that's how I operate all the time in my daily life in my daily practice everywhere that I go. If I drive home a different way it's because I felt like I needed to go home a different way and that's all right. So I can't be boxed in on these types of things. This is the only way that you're allowed to do it.

I think what happens for me, especially in the solo agency, solo for newer world, is that you wear so many hats when it comes time for a sales conversation, you forget all the shit that you talked about. You forget that you care the most about transparency and not being boxed in and telling people this. And you get into a sales call and you're like, what do you need? What's your problem? How do I do it?

And then all these books behind me that I've read, what exactly to say when an objection shows up or the win without pitching manifesto, I lose it all.

Cara Steinmann (01:05:58.306)
Well, it's hard too because I know, I don't know if you do this, but I get in a conversation like that and I love a good puzzle. I love to solve a problem and I know I can figure it out. Just give me enough time, I'll figure it out. So even if it's not the right puzzle that I should be solving, I want a chance to solve the puzzle. I can figure this out for you. Just give me, you know, give me a chance here. I can figure this out for you. Even though maybe that's not the right fit.

Kevin Mooney (01:06:14.992)
For sure. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:06:21.872)
Yeah. It's hard one. I don't know. I'm excited for this new chapter and doing these things and talking and it's just a way to sharpen the skills and then talk to cool people. Entrepreneurs are super fun to talk to. mean, you have shifted 37 times since I've known you. I've... Right.

Cara Steinmann (01:06:33.88)
You'll figure it out.

Cara Steinmann (01:06:47.148)
Yep. Probably will do 37 more times. Like right now I'm trying to figure out how to get paid to play golf.

Kevin Mooney (01:06:51.48)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (01:06:55.696)
What's the first plan that you have for that? Tell me, what is it currently?

Cara Steinmann (01:07:01.39)
My girlfriend that I golf with a lot has, she's a compulsive poster. Like she is a content machine and she's recorded like for the last 18 months, we have so much video of us golfing and just being stupid and dancing on the golf course. like, I think it'd be really interesting to start like a TikTok account and just post women-centric golf content and talk about like, talk about the fact that it's hard to find other females to play with and...

our pickleball team name is luck of the balls. So we were gonna maybe call it luck of the balls, cause that also works for golf. But again, content creation is a lot of work and I historically don't love publishing content myself. So, I mean, I have a TikTok account and I have one post on there that's my dog and that's it. So.

Kevin Mooney (01:07:37.264)
Sure, yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:07:45.668)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:07:50.704)
Yeah, I mean you think about it.

Cara Steinmann (01:07:54.38)
I also thought about starting a company, a clothing company for females, where I was telling you that I was gonna create like a, okay, so when I talked to you, the idea was to have a convertible tank top that had a collar that you could detach once you got past the first tee. Like go into the pro shop, pay for your tee time with your nice little collar on so they don't kick you out. And then once you get out there, just fucking take it off. But now I've decided I'm just gonna create like a collar that you can stick inside any shirt.

Kevin Mooney (01:07:58.958)
You were talking about this.

Kevin Mooney (01:08:18.405)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (01:08:23.756)
like multiple colors or whatever. And then you can just have your collar inside your shirt and then just take it off whenever you want. Yep. Yep. See.

Kevin Mooney (01:08:28.922)
Off you go. Love it. It's perfect. Yeah. I mean, these are all great ways to get paid to golf at the end of the day, right?

Cara Steinmann (01:08:39.574)
Yeah, I don't think that anybody would actually buy that because I think it doesn't bother most people as much as it bothers me.

Kevin Mooney (01:08:45.412)
Why are we such assholes when it comes to things like this? We're just like stuck in our ways. I'm not gonna wear a damn collar t-shirt and then other people are like, just put the t-shirt.

Cara Steinmann (01:08:51.021)
Well.

Cara Steinmann (01:08:55.779)
So there's an actual psychological thing that we have here. It used to be called...

Persistent Demand Avoidance, PDA. It used to be called Persistent Demand Avoidance, but now, and a lot of people with ADHD have this, like if you tell, if I was gonna do something and then you told me to do it, well, I'm not gonna do it now, because you told me to. But it's, they've renamed it, it's a little kinder now, and they call it, by they I mean like the psychology people. They're calling it Persistent Desire for Autonomy. And it's something my husband and I fight about a lot, because...

Even if I was planning on doing it already and I'm on my way out the door to go do it, as soon as he tells me he thinks I should do this or that I have to do something, I'm like, well, guess what? I'm not doing now. And it's just, it's a terrible attitude to have. And I understand that, but I might even choose to wear a collar if they weren't telling me that I have to.

Kevin Mooney (01:09:45.68)
Fuck you. Don't tell me what to do.

It sounds a lot like me.

Kevin Mooney (01:09:59.056)
So is, wait, is this a disease? Is this a, like, what is this?

Cara Steinmann (01:10:02.752)
It's a personality quirk, probably. It's a lot of,

Kevin Mooney (01:10:05.952)
Is it, has it grown? Is it something that people hear about and then develop on their own?

Cara Steinmann (01:10:15.486)
I think a lot of it has to do with your level of neurodiversity. a lot of real neurodiverse people have like people who have autism and ADHD, they have a persistent demand avoidance. They have a persistent demand or desire for autonomy. It's just a thing. It's a thing that people have. Some people have, I don't know where it comes from.

Kevin Mooney (01:10:37.872)
I wonder if I'm autistic.

Cara Steinmann (01:10:39.502)
You might be a little- everybody's a little bit- a little bit- Okay, nerd ever-

Kevin Mooney (01:10:42.7)
Yeah, let's be real. My wife likes to claim that. She's like, it's my autism coming out. I'm like, that's not fair. You're not allowed to say that. You can't take that from autistic people. But, right.

Cara Steinmann (01:10:53.592)
She might be a little autistic. mean, everybody, I'm probably a little bit autistic. I think, like, I used to, you hear about the spectrum and you think of it as a flat line, but I think it's more like the disc assessment where there's this big circle and there's this tiny dot in the middle that society wants us all to fit into. But the reality is that the moment you're born, everything in your environment is going to impact your neuro, your neurology and your nervous system. Whether you have trauma, big trauma, big T trauma or little T trauma.

any kind of like sickness that you have that might impact your nervous system or your neurology, any kind of like brain damage or whatever. Like everything in your environment and every experience you have is changing your neurology and your nervous system from the moment you're born. So everybody is neurodiverse in that way. So there's this tiny little dot that society wants us all to fit into because it's really convenient for them. But if you look at it, we're all somewhere on this, in this circle.

on one end or the other. I'm way closer probably to the ADHD side than the autism side, but I have things about me that you'd be like, like clothing things. Like if my clothing is uncomfortable, it's all I can think about.

Kevin Mooney (01:11:49.72)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:12:01.88)
Yeah. Yeah, I get that. It's funny. It's really funny. I've lived my life in this PDA way. My, my folks have always said that I would do the opposite of what I was told to do or what society thinks that I should do or anyone who suggests anything to me. I literally go and run the opposite direction of that. And I early in my

exploratory days of the Myers-Briggs personality types, I just thought that was an ENTP type of a thing. And I still do it to this day. It may not necessarily be super extreme, where I'm like, hey, I'm going to go see my friends. And Marshall says, yeah, you should do that. I'm like, well, fuck you. Now I'm not going. Right? It's not quite like that. But for instance, in this marketing world, all the gurus are talking about content.

Cara Steinmann (01:12:50.36)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:12:59.93)
Content, content, content, content is king. That's been the saying for years and you gotta go do content. And I'm like, fuck you, I'm not doing content. And.

Cara Steinmann (01:13:09.528)
That's where I was at with Instagram and posting for my business. I was all, I'm not fucking doing it. Guess what I'm gonna do instead? I'm gonna be completely referral based, because you're telling me I have to post all the time. Well, guess what I'm not gonna do?

Kevin Mooney (01:13:21.262)
Right. Watch me do it without doing what you say to do and I'll still win. And I think there's, there's some crazy fucked up things about that because it, for the agency, it boxed us into doing nothing. We didn't advertise, we didn't market, we didn't post on social. We didn't, we didn't do anything. We didn't network. We didn't even go to the pub talks where people go down and do business things and

Cara Steinmann (01:13:24.61)
Yep. Yep.

Cara Steinmann (01:13:36.813)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:13:50.904)
We probably had the best creative work definitely in central Oregon. And we probably matched some of the bigger agencies in Portland from the work that we did. Nobody knew, nobody saw, nobody cared. And if you have that attitude, it's a super detrimental attitude to have. I'm.

Cara Steinmann (01:14:09.246)
It can shoot you in the foot. It has shot me in the foot many a times.

Kevin Mooney (01:14:13.198)
I'm literally in the process of trying to work my way out of it. I don't think that there's some things that I can give up in this PDA concept that we're talking about, but we're literally doing it right now. This is not something I would have done years ago, and I should have done it years ago, maybe if I was just after money and that was the thing. Now this is more of like a mental health exercise for myself, yeah.

Cara Steinmann (01:14:29.357)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (01:14:37.198)
It's an exercise. Yeah, Well, PDA is just one way to look at it. Have you ever done, have you ever done any, have you done that quiz by Gretchen Rubin, The Four Tendencies? She thinks, she says that people fall into one of four categories, like that everyone falls into one of four categories based on where your motivation comes from. So there are upholders who are motivated by what they want, what they think is right. And,

Kevin Mooney (01:14:42.286)
Yeah, no, I've never even thought of this.

Cara Steinmann (01:15:04.618)
also by what they've told other people they'll do, by the expectation that people have for them. They're motivated by both of those things. And then there's obligers who are only primarily motivated by what other people need them to do, what they are expected, what's expected of them. And then there's questioners who are motivated intrinsically. They are not gonna do anything that somebody else wants unless they have decided that that's what they're gonna do, that they've asked all the questions and that makes sense to them. And then there's the rebels.

And I suspect you probably fall into that category as do I. And we are not motivated either way. Our motto is you can't make me and neither can I.

Kevin Mooney (01:15:43.02)
Yeah, that sounds very much like me, but I do think that the question thing like...

Cara Steinmann (01:15:49.774)
You're probably closer to a questioner because you really do need all the information.

Kevin Mooney (01:15:52.672)
Yeah, maybe it's like one of those square charts, right? And you can kind of be a little bit left on that thing because I do, question everything and I ask people questions and I talk to many people. It's like a ENTP trait where you go out and you survey the world and you take all that information and then you kind of compare it to your own thoughts and your own feelings about something. And you might be pulled in a direction, you might be pulled in another, but you sit on it for

Cara Steinmann (01:15:56.942)
You might be a little closer. Yep.

Cara Steinmann (01:16:10.445)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:16:22.17)
could be a long time, it could be years, right? Until you feel like it's your right time to do it, or it just magically happens and you fall into it. So that's like a little bit of that rebel stuff. And then the question, they're like, that is super interesting.

Cara Steinmann (01:16:22.71)
a long time. Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (01:16:36.344)
See, I wish I was a little more like you in the sense that I could sit on things and wait for the right time. I'm so impulsive that I just do it. I'm like, what's the worst that could happen? Let's just do it. Like in 24 hours, I traded in all my clubs and went left-handed. Thank God that's working out so far, but so far.

Kevin Mooney (01:16:45.36)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:16:53.925)
Right.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's pros and cons to that. I think some people look at that waiting period as indecisive or...

Cara Steinmann (01:17:10.936)
Well, look at the podcast, for example. You waited a really long time to actually launch this thing because you were getting all the information.

Kevin Mooney (01:17:17.84)
I started a podcast seven years ago, but we never really recorded it. So it wasn't a podcast, but I'm just saying like,

Cara Steinmann (01:17:26.88)
Yeah, when you, I talked to you like six months or eight months ago about this podcast, about this podcast you want to do, and you have sat on it for a long time. And I know you've been researching and you've been trying to figure out all the right equipment and you've been waiting for it to be the perfect time. like you just, were collecting all the information and just like coalescing everything so that it felt like the right time to move.

Kevin Mooney (01:17:52.656)
That's a pretty word that you just used, but, I don't know if that's exactly what happened, that is, that's something that affects the relationships that I have in my solo work life, solopreneur. I don't even know what the words are to say sometimes. Point is,

Cara Steinmann (01:17:54.638)
Coalesce.

Kevin Mooney (01:18:12.472)
I'll do brand strategy for people and I'll tell them it's gonna take a month. The reality is the process takes a couple of days. I need the calendar time, sit with it. And then I build it in a day, right?

Cara Steinmann (01:18:28.238)
to marinate.

Kevin Mooney (01:18:32.26)
But that whole entire time, I'm in the shower, I'm thinking about it, I'm driving home the long way and I'm thinking about it, I'm walking the dog and thinking about it, I'm playing with the kids and I'm thinking about it. It's just kind of like percolating in the background, what's going on. And that pisses people off because A, they want things very quickly. B, they don't understand why they would pay somebody to do that. Right.

Cara Steinmann (01:18:57.24)
to think.

Kevin Mooney (01:18:59.824)
And so it's a really odd thing, everywhere in my life, this thing exists. And I don't know. I think it bugs the shit out of people. I mean, you're, you're a P person, right? And your Myers-Briggs, you have a P at the end of yours, right? You know, so P people have a tendency to do this where they just kind of sit with it and J people are more like bang. They just kind of make the decision and off they go. So P's and J's

Cara Steinmann (01:19:14.146)
Yeah, I'm an ENFP.

Kevin Mooney (01:19:28.804)
fight constantly and my wife is a jade. So we kind of fight about these types of things, yeah. But it's not because I'm stupid, it's not because I'm indecisive, I'm just, like I need more data, I need more time, I need more something. It needs to, it needs the, right, or the rue just needs to like become its thing. It's not there.

Cara Steinmann (01:19:33.678)
So that tracks.

Cara Steinmann (01:19:46.722)
You don't have all the information yet. I get it.

I used to do that with blog posts. I would get a blog post topic that I needed to write and I'd do all the research and then I'd walk away for a week. So I'd actually, like you said, I'd be in the shower, I'd be walking the dog, I'd be marinating on it and everything's falling into place in my brain. And then I have it basically written in my head by the time I would sit down to write the post and it would take 20 minutes to write because I had already put all the pieces together in my brain. But you need time.

Kevin Mooney (01:19:59.566)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (01:20:20.3)
You need time for that.

Kevin Mooney (01:20:23.44)
It's so weird. don't, I mean, I don't know how my wife puts all the puzzle pieces together so quickly. It's like scary fast often and it works great for her work, right? As a, as a corporate executive, she, she crushes it and it's always spot on to like her intuition and her feelings paired with her, her judging trait and judging isn't judging of people, right? It's just what that, that

Cara Steinmann (01:20:50.7)
making a judgment.

Kevin Mooney (01:20:52.112)
make it a judgment, yeah, she's got that perfect matchup where it can just be very quickly and swiftly and it's the right decision more often than not. Probably right 100 % of the time.

Cara Steinmann (01:21:04.29)
Are you guys very different?

Kevin Mooney (01:21:08.88)
100 % different on our letters. She's an INFJ and I'm an ENTP. The INFJ is, they're a very small percentage of the population. They're the smallest group of the personality types in the like 1 % tile. And the ENTP is relatively small. It's in that like maybe 15 % of people, something like that. It just so happens that the perfect

match for a relationship for an INFJ is an ENTP. So we have the perfect match, but I'll be honest, and I didn't see this coming before this relationship, the differences in those letters and the two different people and then the endless variables of the people and their circumstances and upbringing and nature and nurture and all that, they're so different. They clash often.

And it's just something that we have to constantly work through. And there are some days, some weeks that are just, you know, not super great and we both feel it we're not quite sure how to, to get out of that. And that, that, goes for everybody in a relationship for sure. But I think with our two types, we're just hard headed. We're strong willed, we're independent and we're trying to do this thing together. It makes it really, makes it really hard, but.

Cara Steinmann (01:22:34.029)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (01:22:36.932)
we love each other very much and we're gonna continue to do what we do, we just have to always somehow go back to the foundation of this stuff and realize that we are 100 % opposite of each other, even though we have very similar things that we like. So, yeah, it's interesting.

Cara Steinmann (01:22:55.084)
Yeah, it's Jeremy and I are very different. Also, we are very, very different and in a lot of the same ways that you and Marchelle are probably different. And it's tough sometimes when you're trying to navigate the world alongside somebody who thinks completely differently than you do. But I think our values being so similar and like the fundamental core of what we believe about the world and about what kind of person we want to be, that keeps you together, right? Like if you believe

Kevin Mooney (01:23:01.103)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (01:23:25.054)
in the same things at your core. Like Jeremy and I are lucky, like politically we're very aligned, like fundamentally everything is pretty much aligned. But we just operate completely differently. Like if you give us the same problem, we're gonna approach it two completely different ways, but we'll get there.

Kevin Mooney (01:23:37.978)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:23:42.082)
If Marchelle and I say the same words, they literally mean something different to us individually. She will realize sometimes when she says something to me that what I heard or what I comprehended, what I understood was not even in the ballpark of what she meant by it. And it's kind of a miracle that not just us, humanity is able to

Cara Steinmann (01:23:49.357)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (01:24:12.44)
survive and move forward every single day because there are 16 types. And then there are variations of every single type within that. then there's the circumstances and the nature versus nurture stuff. It's a miracle that we're getting along as well as we do, despite all of the things that are going on. And then there's, you you throw in sex into that thing, male and female, right? Cause you can have a personality type that

Cara Steinmann (01:24:21.304)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Steinmann (01:24:36.398)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (01:24:41.858)
is a male and there's a counterpart with the same personality type that is a female and those traits show up vastly different between the two people. It's a very crazy, crazy thing. Especially when you have a male with a female trait, right? If let's say you have a male who has the F in their personality type, the feeler type. You know, they don't necessarily know how to handle that because they live in the emotional land.

Cara Steinmann (01:24:49.506)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Steinmann (01:24:54.434)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (01:25:04.046)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (01:25:11.236)
where a thinker is just very kind of logical. So that's why you see a lot of men with that kind of like logic attitude and women are typically females or I'm sorry, of course, typically depends on who you ask and what your political stance is. women typically have the feeling trait. So when, when those two things cross, when you see a female with a thinking trait, they're, you're like, who is this like robot lady? Right?

Cara Steinmann (01:25:22.808)
Typically.

Cara Steinmann (01:25:39.648)
Okay.

Kevin Mooney (01:25:40.206)
And then when you see a man with the feeler trait, you're like, who's this like touchy feely huggy guy? Like, why does he give me a hug every time I see him? I don't understand. Cause two thinkers will just be like, sup dude, what's up dude, knuckles or whatever the thing is, right? And we all have this kind of mix around us. have people that we know that have these things and it's just super, super odd, super interesting.

Cara Steinmann (01:26:03.586)
Yeah, I mean, there's a correlation there with the CliftonStrengths too. You've got your 34 strength themes and even in your top five, I think there's like almost 39 million percent, or there's an almost 39 million, one in 39 million chance that your top five would be the same order as somebody else's. You'd have the same one in the same order. So extend that to all 34 and

Kevin Mooney (01:26:27.408)
It's wild.

Cara Steinmann (01:26:32.514)
There's maybe one or it's like a handful of people in the world who have the same strengths in the same order that you do. Then later on your personal experiences, your gender, your work experience, your trauma, all the things that make you who you are. And there's just nobody in the world who's gonna show up in the same way with the same story and approach as you. So think about that in terms of business. When you're creating a business and you're building a brand, nobody's gonna do it the same way you would do it. Nobody.

Kevin Mooney (01:27:02.5)
Yeah, I've said that a couple of times and this is a terrible response for why should I hire you?

Cara Steinmann (01:27:10.124)
Ha ha.

Kevin Mooney (01:27:11.728)
But I just, I've said that in the past where I'm like, hey, nobody's going to do it like me because I'm the only me. And if you like me, that's why you should hire me. I'm not going to tell you to hire me because my process is cool or.

Cara Steinmann (01:27:20.151)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:27:32.132)
I think differently or try to just stay out of any of that stuff. Like I'm the only me. Do you like me? Then hire me. If not, go hire somebody else that fits with you better. And sure, sure the gurus would have something better to say than that, but I get lost in those sales meetings sometimes and I just say the damn thing that I'm supposed to say.

Cara Steinmann (01:27:43.605)
god, I hate.

Cara Steinmann (01:27:51.374)
Well, don't, us entrepreneurial types, hate to like beg for anything either. Like, I'm not, don't, I hope I never have to beg for a job again or like sit in an interview and convince somebody why I'm the right choice. I might not be, I'm probably not, honestly. You're gonna be really sorry you hired me, actually.

Kevin Mooney (01:28:01.945)
my gosh.

Kevin Mooney (01:28:07.95)
Probably not, yeah.

The odds of you actually liking how I work and communicating with me and being around me is slim to none. So you should probably not hire me.

Cara Steinmann (01:28:18.678)
Yeah. Also, the odds of me doing what I'm told are very slim. So let's just get that right out of the way.

Kevin Mooney (01:28:25.69)
This is super low. this is classic.

Cara Steinmann (01:28:31.628)
But that's why I love all the assessments and the CliftonStrengths and like looking at my strengths and my personality, of course I'm a terrible employee. I hate the idea that there's only, I have strategy really high. If somebody tells me to do something, I wanna know why we're doing it that way because there might be a smarter, better, faster, easier way to do it. And if it's not efficient, like just like the golf rule that...

Kevin Mooney (01:28:40.367)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:28:48.4)
For sure.

Cara Steinmann (01:28:57.334)
I was telling you about where the men's league doesn't even play with that rule, but the women's league has this rule that you can't get free relief on the wrong side of the cart path in the tree well, even though the course itself has this local rule. And so I sit down with the girls after this last time, after that was clarified to me and I was all, we need to talk. Like I'm the new, I'm the newbie. This is like my third time playing with them. And I'm in there going, you guys listen, we got a problem. We got to change this rule. This is bullshit.

Kevin Mooney (01:29:04.526)
Insane.

Kevin Mooney (01:29:15.706)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (01:29:25.186)
But the thing is, here's the thing, I'm not the only one that thinks that. All the other gals I was talking to, they're like, I know it's a terrible rule, why do we play that way? I'm like, that's what I'm saying. Like who do we talk to to change this rule? But employers don't like that.

Kevin Mooney (01:29:38.346)
No. No. No, Uh-uh. I've never been a great employee. Never have.

Cara Steinmann (01:29:44.622)
You know what though? I used to say that I was unemployable, that I was just, I'm broken in that way. just, just, I'm terrible at being employed by somebody and it's, you know, maybe it's the PDA, maybe it's just my attitude or my strategy, whatever. But I wish somebody when I was younger had told me, maybe you're not broken, maybe you're just highly entrepreneurial. Like that's a totally different way to look at that. And I spent so many years feeling like a fucking asshole because I can't do what I'm told.

Kevin Mooney (01:30:04.154)
Sure.

Kevin Mooney (01:30:11.994)
Yeah, I...

I mean, you're very employable and it just takes that person who understands that that's what they need in their company to hire you, right? You have to have somebody who is far enough outside of that little tiny circle that you're talking about of what people should be and act like and look like. And you need somebody that's far enough outside of that to say, I need somebody who kind of

Cara Steinmann (01:30:36.664)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (01:30:46.084)
breaks the rules. Somebody who is a free thinker, somebody who does things completely different outside of this tech bubble that we're in or this golf bubble that we're in, whatever the thing is, I need somebody outside of that. But the problem is the majority of people don't want to act outside of that bubble. They want to stay in it because they've seen success inside of that bubble. Nike is successful. We better do exactly what Nike says. Well, if you do

Cara Steinmann (01:31:09.859)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (01:31:14.594)
exactly what Nike says, then you would probably fire all of your people and hire people like us. Because that's how they were actually founded. You're just looking at it through the lens of today or something like that. And so you have to somehow align yourself with those people who value those things. I've had meetings with CEOs and higher up folks.

Cara Steinmann (01:31:24.963)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:31:40.76)
And they listen to me and they maybe believe part of it and they don't believe part of it. And ultimately at the end of the day, they don't want somebody like me on the team because I'm going to cause trouble or stir something up or I'm going to say something off color or I'm going to pose a crazy idea or something. And they just don't want that. Or in their mind, they're thinking it's going to take a long time to develop this person. It's going to take a lot of money and resources to

to do this guy's ideas or something like that. And so I get it, I don't fault them, I'm not mad at them, I'm just, those are the things that I notice. Like you need to have a little bit of crazy in you to want crazy me working with you.

Cara Steinmann (01:32:18.379)
Yeah.

Cara Steinmann (01:32:23.47)
Well, the very definition of having an employee is that you get to control what they do. And people like you and I are very hard to control. And that makes sense. Like I wouldn't want to hire me. I'm going to cause a lot of problems in your business unless you actually want to like let me do my own thing, which is not going to happen.

Kevin Mooney (01:32:28.1)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:32:36.174)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:32:40.87)
my God, let me tell you this quick story really fast. That's an oxymoron, isn't it? Quick story really fast. I was hired to do a website. And the first meeting that we had prior to me getting paid was to meet with the software guys. The software guys did the booking software for this company.

and we had the meeting with them and I realized really quickly that these guys were doing some illegal shit. This was not a PCI compliant software. They were sending credit card information via JavaScript and Git post functionalities to their servers and then sending it from their server to the payment processor. So I sat through the entire meeting

kind of asked some poking, prodding, prying questions to see what the people would say. And I got a really, really bad feeling about it. We got off the call and I called the owner of the company and was like, hey, I think this shit is super illegal and you guys have been doing it for the last two years. I'm not gonna put my name on this website. I don't wanna be a part of this. I'm not gonna be complicit in or implicit, whatever the word is. I'm not gonna, yeah, I'm not gonna be a part of this stuff.

Cara Steinmann (01:34:05.281)
complicit I think.

Kevin Mooney (01:34:08.944)
So I lost this $15,000 website because I couldn't be a part of that. He was very, very thankful. And the entire situation became very real and blew up for them because they reached out to the software company, which really isn't a company. It's a dude in a van traveling around the country. And his partner now lives in Brazil or Belize or something. Super, super sketchy.

Cara Steinmann (01:34:15.938)
Good for you.

Kevin Mooney (01:34:38.532)
blew that whole situation up and the opportunity just for me to make some money didn't happen. But this is a prime example of how my brain works at picking everything apart as we're going through this and.

Cara Steinmann (01:34:41.868)
Damn.

Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:34:55.156)
I don't know what the moral of the story is, it's like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna cause some shit is what I'm saying. I'm gonna fuck something up here in a good way.

Cara Steinmann (01:34:58.966)
The moral of the story is that...

Cara Steinmann (01:35:04.632)
Well, you're not gonna just sit there and do what you're told without thinking. And I think a lot of, like, you wanna get on the whole patriarchy capitalism thing here. Those systems only work if everybody's doing what they're told and stays in their place and doesn't upset the boat. So of course you're gonna be a problem. No thinking over here, Kevin, no thinking, no thinking allowed.

Kevin Mooney (01:35:10.383)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (01:35:25.392)
percent.

Yeah, I'm a problem everywhere.

Right. Yeah, just do. Just do. That's all we want.

Cara Steinmann (01:35:36.056)
Just do what you're told so that we can produce things and make money and just stay in your place and do what you're told. So.

Kevin Mooney (01:35:42.468)
Yeah, it's a real thing. Well, what do you think, Kara? It's been, we're at like, we're at about three hours. What do you think?

Cara Steinmann (01:35:49.25)
Three hours? Well, I hope we have some nuggets in here that you can use.

Kevin Mooney (01:35:56.218)
There's no nuggets. We're going to put the whole thing up. I mean, minus the technical glitches and yeah.

Cara Steinmann (01:36:00.216)
the glitches in the middle. Yeah, I think it was fun talking. I think you're gonna have some really interesting conversations.

Kevin Mooney (01:36:07.15)
I hope so. mean, this is really fun. know that it went into golf for a long time, but I'm interested in golf and I don't care. I think it was a blast.

Cara Steinmann (01:36:16.576)
You never know. You never know what we're going to where we're going to land.

Kevin Mooney (01:36:22.202)
So let's say our goodbyes and then we'll stay on for a few minutes afterwards. Cool, thanks. Bye everybody.

Cara Steinmann (01:36:25.102)
Okay, goodbye. Thanks for having me.

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