Podcast

Kevin Mooney: I didn't know what I was going to talk about with Peter, and I did a show on Wednesday. I sent you the raw edit of it.

Cara Steinmann: Yeah, it wanted me to log into Dropbox so I couldn't look at it on my phone. I hate Dropbox.

Kevin Mooney: I use it for file storage, that's basically it. But the thing with Riverside is when you share a link with people, it's just a black screen for them. Some weird glitchy stuff there.

Cara Steinmann: That's weird. Well, we'll find out if Riverside's on its last leg today.

Kevin Mooney: I was saying that in the first episode, I was like, maybe I want you as a sponsor, will you sponsor me? So, how's everything going? Not like a stupid intro, but since we last talked, we were off in outer space, talking about everything from politics to golf, I think.

Cara Steinmann: Yep, the patriarchy. We were getting spicy.

Kevin Mooney: This is exactly why, when we were on the phone last week, we said we need to figure out how to just record the phone calls we have that are interesting. I lose so much good content talking to somebody on the phone.

Cara Steinmann: It was really fun to do the show with Peter, he did this thing people do, where he had to give pre-context to the context so everybody knows who we are.

Kevin Mooney: I mean, you kind of have to do that sometimes, especially if you've known somebody a long time. Melissa and I had a podcast together called Glow Well, a wellness podcast. We've known each other for 30 years, we'd start joking and inside jokes would slip out, and we'd think, nobody's going to get that.

Kevin Mooney: Is it though, or is it part of the character development? You're talking about names nobody knows, and then 200 episodes in, someone makes a weird connection to something they heard two years ago.

Cara Steinmann: If they've hung on for 200 episodes without getting pissed off that they didn't know what was going on. We'll take a poll. Dear listeners, let Kevin know if you want the backstory or if you want to figure it out as you go. I think it's probably half and half.

Kevin Mooney: They should have some say.

Cara Steinmann: I'm the person watching a movie, annoying my husband because I recognize an actor and have to know what else he was in, and pretty soon I've missed half the movie because I'm on IMDB. For those who don't know, Jeremy's my husband.

Kevin Mooney: It's the running joke, you have to do it. Reminds me of my son Cass. We're in a movie and it just began and he's like, why are they doing that, who are these people?

Cara Steinmann: Wait, you have a son? Right, your wife had one, stepson. Okay, of course. I just forgot, we don't talk about kids very often.

Kevin Mooney: I call him my son, I've been his dad for half his life at this point. Now that I have two kids it's all I talk about, which is a whole new area of life I never explored before. I was always the guy who didn't do family and kids.

Cara Steinmann: So Cass is the age my son Parker was when you and I became friends. You used to send him all the scooter stuff and he thought that guy's so cool, you were a big influence on him.

Kevin Mooney: It's wild though, he was just a little kid in the background during our calls, saying I'm bored, I don't know what to do, and you'd say go ride a bike, be a kid.

Cara Steinmann: It's hard working from home with your kid, you think it'll be convenient but it's not, you're just actively ignoring them all the time.

Kevin Mooney: I think about that a lot. Cass is into YouTube, Minecraft, Roblox, and it's easy to just say go play video games. I'm probably the one in the relationship who says stop, get outside, go do something.

Cara Steinmann: We never let Parker have video games growing up, he had an iPad, played Minecraft and Roblox, and it drove us crazy when he'd watch other people play games instead. But I'm definitely the less strict one between me and Jeremy. Parker and I will be rotting on the couch with our phones and I'll say, shit, dad's almost home, get up and look productive.

Kevin Mooney: I'm guilty of that too.

Cara Steinmann: Totally random sidebar, do you and your wife share locations? I've seen TikToks calling it an invasion, and I'm like, what? I love that Jeremy knows where I am, that I can see when he's on his way home from a bike ride.

Kevin Mooney: Really? I think it's fucking weird, but I have a new perspective now with a wife and family, and our au pair too. We ordered her from Germany, no, I almost said something really weird.

Cara Steinmann: You have an au pair? That's so sophisticated, look at you, Kevin.

Kevin Mooney: I was hoping for Mary Poppins energy, spoonful of sugar, but it's not like that, I'm not bashing her. My wife did all the research, found this company called Cultural Care, and the platform is basically Tinder minus the swiping. You go through profiles, watch little videos about why they want to be an au pair, choose a few, have some conversations, and Cultural Care sponsors the visa. We were looking for someone who'd integrate into the family, not an extrovert who wanted to party. We talked to her once or twice and it was a great fit. She flew out in June of '24, stayed a year, and we extended, she's with us until December.

Kevin Mooney: On the Find My Friends thing, I didn't share my location at first, and she said she liked knowing where I was but then said she kind of liked not knowing where I was either, it wasn't like I was sneaking around, I just didn't really care.

Cara Steinmann: What? I'd be so offended.

Kevin Mooney: Fast forward, our au pair shows up, shares her location with us for her own safety in her words, and it turns out she tracks everybody, a whole list of people. It's a thing among Gen Z, they all share locations.

Cara Steinmann: Snapchat, everyone can see where everyone is. We started sharing locations because Parker used to call me constantly asking where I was, when I was coming home, so I said, how about I just share my location so you can see I'm pulling into the driveway. Now all my girlfriends and I share locations too, safety-wise for the single ones.

Kevin Mooney: It's something I didn't know anything about, and now I share mine. We went to New York, my wife had work there, and I had the kids to myself. I didn't know which way was up, so I shared my location and never turned it off. Now I stalk her when she travels, like, what is she doing at a bar right now?

Cara Steinmann: I stalk Jeremy all the time. Last night I was at my friend's boutique having a beer, thought I had two more hours before Jeremy got home, checked his location, he was pulling into the driveway. Called him, he'd gotten off early.

Kevin Mooney: It's an odd thing, I guess I'm not opposed to it, but it's kind of creepy.

Cara Steinmann: The only reason I'd have a problem with it is if I was doing something shady.

Kevin Mooney: I think it's because I was single for so long, nobody was there to account for where I was.

Cara Steinmann: I get why people want privacy, but the people who say their spouse doesn't have their phone code, I think that's weird. I have all of Jeremy's passwords, he doesn't have mine, actually, if something happened to me he wouldn't know any of his own passwords because I keep them in my vault.

Kevin Mooney: We know each other's pins, some general passwords, but not everything. Marcelle's big corporate executive stuff has some crazy encrypted password manager, there's not a chance I could log in anyway, and I don't care. Sharing stuff is interesting, having a family and growing that is interesting.

Cara Steinmann: It's been a change for you, you were single a long time.

Kevin Mooney: Very long time. I caught up with a good friend Wednesday, a construction guy, we run into each other around town but never actually get together. He started a family in his early 20s, his oldest is 16 now. He saw me and said, you've got tattoos, you're married, two kids, what happened? I said, I'm a late bloomer.

Cara Steinmann: It takes a while to find somebody. I have a sister-in-law in her late 30s still dating, sad sometimes because the men she dates are older, have kids, and she doesn't want kids, big conflict.

Kevin Mooney: I don't think that's possible to reconcile. When I was dating, it was one side or the other, you have kids or you don't want them, and I was in the middle, figured I probably wanted some eventually but I was getting older, had to find the right person. Luckily I found Marcelle, she had one, we had one, nice family. But that dynamic was hard to navigate in dating, and most people with kids had a lot of baggage.

Cara Steinmann: One of my girlfriends just got divorced, twin daughters who are 16, so she's on the tail end, it gets easier, Parker's 19 now and it's a lot easier. But she wants to date younger guys because their equipment still works, but they have younger kids, so if she gets attached she ends up parenting teenagers all over again. She can't have it all.

Kevin Mooney: I dated some people ten years younger than me in my thirties, and the maturity gap was awful, we were on completely different planets. Now with our au pair who's 25, I don't understand her generation at all. One thing I've noticed, if it's not served on a platter, they don't know what to do. The problem-solving skills of that generation are almost non-existent. She had a nail in her tire, called me, I said put air in it and see if it holds, she asked where do I get that. I grew up without the internet, you had to figure it out.

Cara Steinmann: You're a little younger than me, I was born in '80, kind of a shoulder generation, Gen X but I feel more millennial. We had to adopt technology quickly, so we understand both what it was like before and how to adopt quick solutions, but we can still problem-solve, read a map.

Kevin Mooney: I remember printing out MapQuest directions and trying to read them while driving.

Cara Steinmann: We're going camping at Mammoth this weekend, no cell reception, no wifi, and I'm nervous because Parker's driving separately and he definitely doesn't know how to read a map. Remember driving with a Nokia phone held to your ear the whole time, no issue at all? Try holding your phone to your ear and driving now, it's hard.

Kevin Mooney: My truck's Bluetooth didn't connect one day, I picked up the phone to talk while driving and it felt so foreign, even though that's just what you did back then.

Cara Steinmann: That's your age showing. I also think these auto manufacturers are messing with the glass on newer windshields, when I tilt my head slightly everything goes wonky, maybe I'm getting old, maybe something's in the glass.

Kevin Mooney: I drove my '99 Tacoma until 2022, never a problem. Then I bought a new Tacoma with all the electronic stuff, and I nearly got into two accidents where someone in front slowed down and I didn't catch it until too late, after 25 years of driving with zero accidents. Never had that issue with my Ford, a Super Duty 350, big diesel.

Cara Steinmann: What kind of Ford are you driving? Jesus.

Kevin Mooney: I just wanted one. Louie used to ride shotgun in the Tacoma, then Cass came along and the Tacoma's five-foot bed was too small.

Cara Steinmann: You're a family man now, I don't see you in a minivan.

Kevin Mooney: Straight to the full-size one-ton that can pull a spaceship.

Cara Steinmann: If you buy a car you love, you'll drive the wheels off it, buying and selling cars is always a losing venture. I accidentally bought front-wheel-drive when I wanted all-wheel-drive, traded it in at a loss, and the car I have now, the more I drive it the more I love it.

Kevin Mooney: I don't tow much, just drive it downtown to the office and do computer work, kind of cheesy. Though I do have a drift boat I float down rivers, and the Tacoma got 15 mpg unloaded, 11 towing, so I figured go big, the diesel gets 22 mpg and doesn't even notice what's behind it.

Cara Steinmann: What color is it? It's nice to sit up high.

Kevin Mooney: Marcelle really likes it, kids like it, heated and cooled seats, moon roof, the whole nine yards. I was aggressive paying down the Tacoma so I had a big down payment, got a solid deal.

Cara Steinmann: Car payments suck, we owe a little on Jeremy's Ranger, just paid off our transit van. We used to travel in it when the boys raced mountain bikes, sleep in it, but Parker's 19 now and doesn't think he'd fit. We're taking it camping this weekend, sleeping in it one night. I love it for skiing, you can change in there when it's cold. Part of me wants to get rid of it for the driveway space, but then winter comes and I love the van again.

Kevin Mooney: Where do you guys ski? Isn't Sugar Bowl getting a facelift?

Cara Steinmann: We've gone there for years, it's owned by the homeowners association, so they cap passes and it's never crowded, only 45 minutes from our house, you can mountain bike in the morning and ski in the afternoon.

Kevin Mooney: I think about what happened up in Tahoe, haven't been in ten years, our trainer used to live in Incline Village, a buddy lives near South Lake, the housing boom up there is bananas. I miss Donner Ski Ranch, that old-school stuff was a blast from the past.

Cara Steinmann: Parker and Jeremy get up there to ride moto and mountain bikes. I might golf tomorrow at a little municipal course in Truckee called Ponderosa.

Kevin Mooney: You got into golf because you wanted more time with Jeremy, no experience before, right?

Cara Steinmann: Very little. Friends we played pickleball with, Matt and Sky, golfed all the time and invited us to a nine-hole course to play best ball, super chill. It's been tough because Jeremy gets frustrated and I'm not as competitive, I don't care if I suck. I thought it'd be good for us since Parker's less interested in hanging out with us now, and Jeremy and I have different recreational interests, he mountain bikes and I don't want to get hurt, which historically has been true when I try it. We picked up golf about 18 months ago. I had a week of golf camp at eight, played a little in high school sneaking onto a country club at twilight, minimal, didn't know the rules.

Kevin Mooney: How do you like it now?

Cara Steinmann: I'm obsessed, my ADHD is hyper-fixated on it, my TikTok algorithm is just golf content, it's addictive.

Kevin Mooney: Is it the course itself or perfecting the swing that you like?

Cara Steinmann: Both. I like being out there, like hanging out in a park day drinking, though you can do it without drinking too. Last time in the ladies league, the beverage cart came by at 9:30 and I got a double vodka lemonade, my game actually got a little better, there's a balance.

Kevin Mooney: I start with a beer on the driving range before our tee time.

Cara Steinmann: Now I didn't know you golfed. Are you good at it?

Kevin Mooney: I grew up golfing, played in tournaments, I was the sports kid, did all the sports. My dad started taking me when he and my grandpa would go, I took lessons at Whitney Oaks and played a lot at Indian Creek. I was pretty good, but never learned to keep score or figure out a handicap. Played a lot until I moved up here, then in my broke twenties it was choose between $50 at the bar or golfing, and I chose the bar. We'd still play now and then. I can hang, pretty all right.

Cara Steinmann: I bet you're better than you give yourself credit for.

Kevin Mooney: Probably better than some, but I don't take it seriously, don't wear the right shoes, don't care about attire, want to drive the cart, like hitting drivers, don't love the fairway, like a short approach. Got really good at chipping at Whitney Oaks, I hate putting, I just walk up and smack it at the hole, sometimes I nail a 30-foot putt, sometimes I'm 15 feet past. If I played with people who didn't take it seriously I'd loosen up and play better. Developed a nasty slice over the years, figured out how to correct it once in my 20s, but don't play enough to keep the swing consistent now.

Cara Steinmann: It's a tough sport, the ball's just sitting there and you're the only variable, how many ways can I fuck this up. But you get one great shot and it feels amazing, then everything else on that hole sucks. Chipping is really hard.

Kevin Mooney: All of it's hard, but it's fun to hear you get into it.

Cara Steinmann: I'm annoying myself with how obsessed I am. Jeremy's not as into it, but he plays with me since it's something we do together and I don't take it seriously. We play best ball, if I hit out of bounds and can't find it, I just drop a new ball, don't even keep score half the time. But I want to golf more since I'm only 45 and could do this for 20 more years and actually get decent, which means playing more and with better people. I joined the ladies league at the country club, they're rigid about rules, even more than the house rules, no free relief in tree wells on the wrong side of the cart path, which is why I switched from right-handed to left-handed.

Kevin Mooney: You switched hands? What are you, Phil Mickelson?

Cara Steinmann: I'm actually left-handed, very left-handed, my husband's left-handed too but plays right-handed in everything. I learned golf right-handed at eight, played left-handed briefly in high school, so I've done both. When you're a beginner nothing feels good either way. The pro at Hagen Oaks said since I could play right-handed at all, stick with it for equipment availability. But I got suspicious I was set up wrong, so I demoed the same clubs left and right-handed at Hagen Oaks, videotaped my swing in slow motion, and uploaded it to ChatGPT asking which way I should play. It said I look way more natural left-handed, hips engaging properly, coming over the top right-handed. I had a lesson already booked to fix my slice, showed the pro both swings instead, he felt bad he'd missed it, but agreed I should switch, better late than never. I traded in all my clubs, only had to pay a couple hundred bucks difference, and it's already going straighter. Played 18 holes twice and 9 more, hitting nearly twice as far with the driver, contact still inconsistent because I don't fully trust it yet, but it's going straight.

Kevin Mooney: Crazy. You're a golfer now, talking the talk.

Cara Steinmann: I wish more young gals would play with me, my cart partner last game was 86, cute but slow, and we don't have a ton in common, one of them used to play with my grandma. Do you hate unsolicited advice, or are you humble and gracious about it?

Kevin Mooney: Depends on the category. If it's about branding or marketing or websites, unsolicited, I'd say go fuck yourself, I don't have time. But if it's a stranger and it just clicks, I'm genuinely thankful. It also depends on how we arrive at the advice, if a buddy hypes up fixing my swing on the drive over then jumps in after one bad shot, I get pissed. But if it comes out of nowhere, unprompted, I'll take it. So how it arrives matters more than who gives it, honestly, I'm kind of an asshole about it.

Cara Steinmann: I'm averse to advice even though I need it as a beginner. On the course mid-swing is not the time to fix things. A guy helped me open my clubface in a sand trap during a tournament, brilliant, thank you. But another time I hit a decent drive that drifted slightly left and a lady in my group said, I know what you're doing wrong, and in my head I was like, shut the fuck up, I already know what I did, it's already done.

Kevin Mooney: Yeah, tell me before I swing next time.

Cara Steinmann: I'm mid-round, don't need more in my head as a beginner. Have you watched Stick?

Kevin Mooney: Waiting on the last episode, finished the rest last night.

Cara Steinmann: We caught up last night too, super cute.

Kevin Mooney: One bad shot and you're in your head the rest of the round, gotta use that Gary Grosswiener idea, whoever, of forgetting your last shot and moving forward. It's a heady sport. I golfed with my father-in-law recently and shortly after landed a golf client, a private club here in Bend, on retainer. I should've called you to pick your brain, I've played most of my life, understand the game and the people, but I'm a bit removed from it. Golf's on an upswing right now, like Formula One.

Cara Steinmann: COVID helped with that. It's interesting golfing as a female, definitely the minority. Jeremy and I went to Bandon Dunes, I didn't realize what a big deal it was, ChatGPT suggested it while planning our anniversary trip, people were there from Canada, the East Coast, all these bro-y trips, I saw one other female golfer in two days, an older woman with her husband. I'm almost always the only woman at the driving range, took me a long time to feel comfortable going alone because every dude wants to give you advice, check out this YouTube channel, just leave me alone.

[technical interruption, feedback and reconnection]

Kevin Mooney: I don't hear any of that weird sound from you anymore.

Cara Steinmann: All this podcasting stuff is complicated, I'm impressed you got your whole setup together, it took you a while deciding.

Kevin Mooney: I had the camera over here yesterday, now up here, just playing with it, this software's pretty glitchy but it works for now.

Cara Steinmann: None of them are perfect, I used Squadcast for a while, fine, but I had slow wifi too. Zoom's been pretty good, and you do get separate audio tracks with Zoom.

Kevin Mooney: I want to get set up for in-person eventually, then you can control everything. Relying on Riverside feels a little odd, great features but glitchy, the first show with Peter it stopped halfway through and kicked us both out. Weird to just be gone, where'd we go, what happened, but going back into the editor it's fine, layers the separate tracks back together.

Cara Steinmann: You want to do in-person recording anyway, right?

Kevin Mooney: That's the ultimate goal, but it's complex, you need an XLR mic into a mixer, cameras with HDMI into the same mixer so audio and video sync, and the right platform, buy a Rode PodMic and it might only be USB.

Cara Steinmann: In-person's been one of the most frustrating things starting a podcast with my sister Christmas, she wants to record in-person always, I'm used to separate tracks so you can cut out a barking dog without ruining the whole track. We decided done is better than perfect. Zoom's actually filtering background noise really well, her dog barked mid-recording and you can't even hear it.

Kevin Mooney: I was wondering about that buzz in my headset, wasn't sure how long to let it go, then I turned it off and everything went wonky.

Cara Steinmann: My dog barked too just now, curious if it'll show up on the recording.

Kevin Mooney: I don't think I heard it. I've got echo cancellation on, mine turned off during the glitch so there's probably an echo now, but there are tools to fix audio in just one section, I don't fully know how to use them yet.

Cara Steinmann: I found a company called Alphonic, their auto-mastering AI is so good, it removed all of Christmas's plosives, she was mad at herself for the mouth-smacking sound and it completely disappeared after running through Alphonic.

Kevin Mooney: I think I was just doing that, it's a whole thing. Like you said, done is better than perfect, I'm just talking about whatever I want with whoever I want, and if it dips into business it does, if it stays on golf for two hours it's a golf episode, I don't care.

Kevin Mooney: Here's the reality though, I'm trying to get this client to extend with me another year, we did a really good job for them, huge ROI, case study material, but I'm a little concerned because we were tasked with generating leads, and leads are tapering off. Granted it's July, peak season, people are settled. This club isn't cheap, private, 50 years standing, high price point, hard to onboard someone right now. They want more women in the club, and I'm thinking, what do I say to women to draw them in, what can I do this fall and winter so they join next spring. I don't know the answer, but I know they want more women. Most current members are lifelong private-club golf people, whole families grew up in these communities, like the yacht club, everyone just grew up in it. There are these old ladies who crochet and play chess. How do you bring in the new generation?

Cara Steinmann: I can only speak from my own experience as a novice. For me, if I wanted to play more, Jeremy has a nine-to-five and I have more flexibility, so Wednesdays are open for league, but that's not typical. I could book a tee time anytime but I'd probably get paired with a bunch of dudes I don't want to hang out with, better, bro-y, not wanting to wait around for me. It's not an accessible sport for women in a lot of ways, mostly men, and not all of us want to hang out with a bunch of dudes, no offense to them. Jeremy and I get paired with randoms and that's fine because we're together, but going alone as a woman isn't easy, you need people to go with, or you just hit balls at the range.

Kevin Mooney: So what makes it accessible to women?

Cara Steinmann: I don't fully know. Ladies leagues help, though even that's not ideal, I have to wear a collar, which feels bullshit, if Tiger Woods can wear an athletic tee at the US Open why can't I wear an athletic tank instead of a stupid collared shirt. Rules say knee-length shorts or skirts, that's not happening, haven't seen anyone try to enforce it yet, but the sport needs to evolve, it's intimidating, snobby sometimes, should be more fun and accessible.

Kevin Mooney: Golf's always been a snobby sport, wealthy playing golf, that's why the rules exist. I can't shift the whole culture, but we've talked about it a lot at this club.

Cara Steinmann: I'm probably not their target demographic either, that's the kind of club my cousin's husband joined near Santa Rosa, $25,000 buy-in, $500 a month, he's a good golfer, hangs out with the bros on Wind Down Wednesdays. It's definitely male-dominated and makes it hard for women to get into.

Kevin Mooney: To piggyback, you're not not the target audience, you're a female golfer who loves the sport and is passionate about it, who else would join a club otherwise? Sure, exclusivity and affordability factor in, but if you already have the means and want to get into golf, your mentality is identical to that guy, he just has more cash.

Cara Steinmann: It'd have to be motivated by community. I'm not a member of the club I league at, I get a discount for playing in the league, but I don't want to play there every time, I want variety, I want to golf with friends who aren't members too, so it doesn't make sense to commit to one course.

Kevin Mooney: That makes sense, and community is something these guys talk about, the hard part is opening that community to a different demographic. Best I can do right now is put the message out there that this is also for you.

Cara Steinmann: I've thought about creating a ladies golf app, finding partners, did some research, there are apps like a dating app for golf partners, but only a couple let you toggle for female partners specifically. For people wanting to play more and get better, not having enough women to play with is the big barrier.

Kevin Mooney: Interesting, thanks for the insight.

Cara Steinmann: Maybe Women Wednesdays, ladies tee times only certain evenings, though that might piss some people off.

Kevin Mooney: They do have some events, it's more about the attractant, what pierces the veil of the all-men's-club perception, though this place isn't officially that, they're trying to bring women in.

Cara Steinmann: It's a giant untapped market.

Kevin Mooney: For sure, but again, how do you shift an entire sport's culture to include people.

Cara Steinmann: They could not make women wear collared shirts for one. It rubs me the wrong way, I had to go buy collared shirts I'll never wear anywhere else, and I don't look cute in my golf gear.

Kevin Mooney: Piece of advice for dudes wearing golf shirts in public, also not a good look, that's a Coach's Corner special.

Cara Steinmann: You're wearing a polo right now.

Kevin Mooney: This isn't golf, this is thrift store, I wear collared shirts, now mostly linen, my wife converted me, linen shirt daddy over here, not just black Costco tees anymore. But everybody knows the golf-shirt guy who wears it everywhere, even to a funeral because it's his only nice shirt, we all know that guy.

Cara Steinmann: Loosen up that rule, it's arbitrary, why do we need a collar. I guess they'd say go to the municipal course with no rules, we play Black Oak, a nine-hole in Auburn, no rules, you could golf in a bikini.

Kevin Mooney: Hell yeah. Growing up in Rocklin playing Indian Creek, no rules there, you could do whatever, then playing nicer courses as I got older, I didn't like those people, didn't like the game anymore for a while.

Cara Steinmann: That's part of the problem, it comes across exclusive if you don't have the right clothes and gear.

Kevin Mooney: That's what those clubs want, the exclusivity. I've learned some of the politics, they pretend to want inclusivity but they don't, it's not there, not going to happen.

Cara Steinmann: Surprising they even want to attract women then, since it's such an old boys club, they don't really care if we feel comfortable because they don't really care if we're there.

Kevin Mooney: Setting my client aside since they don't fit that mold exactly, but the culture as a whole doesn't care, doesn't even want people who look like them if they don't already know them, it's that tight-knit, not really about sexism or racism, just, I don't know you so I don't want you here, weirdly narrow.

Cara Steinmann: There's a club in Truckee I want to play, Lahontan, a par three, but it's private, member or invite only, bummer, no good par-three courses around here otherwise.

Kevin Mooney: It's America, you don't have to golf there, fuck those people.

Cara Steinmann: Guess not, but I want a par three course nearby, none around besides that one.

Kevin Mooney: Well, shit. Anyway, it's not where I thought I'd find myself at this age, I didn't think I'd pick up golf again like this, it's annoying my husband a little.

Cara Steinmann: If he could hit straight he'd be more into it, he threw his driver in a tree once at a course in Lincoln, threw another club up trying to get it down, that one got stuck too, ended up with four clubs 20 feet up an oak tree until a guy behind us finally came up asking if everything was okay and used his ball retriever to snag them all down. Full temper tantrum, just lay up next time.

Kevin Mooney: A ten-cup moment.

Cara Steinmann: So what about outside golf, with Parker basically an adult now, I don't have a grasp on your career, I know you're podcasting, but are you still doing copywriting and marketing?

Cara Steinmann: No, God no, I got out of marketing. I had a weird 2020 where I fell out of love with it but didn't want to admit it, I'd built a profitable consultancy in content marketing and hated it but hadn't verbalized that yet. I shifted briefly toward SEO consulting, a business coach pushed me to go hard on it because of the money, but I hated it. That's part of why I got into what I do now, hosting paid membership communities, mastermind-style, and I do CliftonStrengths coaching, leadership coaching for women entrepreneurs. Taking that assessment in 2020 helped me realize I had zero execution skills in my top ten, all big-picture strategy, connectedness is my number one, very people-oriented, not a checklist person. That explained why service-based, retainer-based delivery work never fit my personality. Now I love bringing women together, introducing people to each other.

Kevin Mooney: I'm interested in that because I'm dabbling in community stuff too, and I get that the quick cash-grab version is build a community, sell a course, make money, get forgotten. That's not what you're doing. I have 10, 12, 15 years of industry knowledge in my head but I don't know how to package it into a product I'd feel good selling, or how to be a coach or consultant. Building a community and then marketing it to grow still means using all my marketing skills, just for myself.

Cara Steinmann: It feels different marketing for yourself. Ravel, my community, grew organically through referrals, two of a hundred members came from a podcast I did, everyone else was someone I personally invited or a referral from an existing member. I'm not selling coaching in there, though I do end up coaching some members informally. I think of it as holding space in a very specific shape, and people pay to access that. Turns out women entrepreneurs feel really isolated, so I built the community intentionally around core values, freedom, authenticity, connection, inclusivity, kindness. People pay for access to a space, not a product. I facilitate the masterminds, keep time, make sure everyone gets a fair chance to talk, I'm the vibe checker. I make introductions, you should meet this person. That led to me building an app called Maven Match, launching in August, a networking tool for women entrepreneurs across different small communities that don't overlap, pairing people by core values and complementary services, using CliftonStrengths and Myers-Briggs data uploaded by users, plus an ocean temperament test, because core values and referral compatibility correlate with temperament. You have to like somebody to refer them business.

Kevin Mooney: I like that you're creating a space, not pumping people through a funnel to buy digital products. That's part of why I struggle in my current space, I can't be on the hook for outcomes I don't control. I had a sales call recently, asked for real money upfront for strategy, they asked what ROI to expect, I had just done an ROI exercise for the golf client, a huge number, but stating it risks setting a false expectation. I told the guy I can't guarantee ROI, and if anyone does, run from them. He didn't hire me, that's fine, that's what the fit check is for. But I struggle with that constantly, ten years, over a hundred clients, and I can't say how many actually got a real ROI from working with me, it hurts. Maybe it wasn't my fault, maybe it wasn't theirs either, just a product-market fit thing. That's the same sticky point that led you to Ravel's structure, no guru at the top, no guaranteed outcome, just access to a space. I remember your first community invite years ago and thinking, nope, not playing in this sandbox.

Cara Steinmann: That was a different community, the Quantum Collective, tried to pair agencies with vetted contractors, didn't work out. I've experimented with a ton of stuff, retreats, other communities. With Ravel, the promise isn't a product or a guaranteed outcome, it's a safe, vetted space. I found out what I do really well, hold space, make people feel safe, my husband says that's my superpower, people just tell me things, sometimes annoyingly so. The only criteria to join is don't be an asshole, we've never had problems, I don't have to moderate. It's a monthly or yearly membership, masterminds cost more.

Kevin Mooney: I honestly wasn't sure what you'd been doing full-time, it's been a couple years since we dove into this stuff.

Cara Steinmann: I completely lost my ability to write, maybe perimenopause, maybe ADHD off the charts, I used to write a blog post in 30 minutes and have it be great, now I'd rather talk to people than write.

Kevin Mooney: I understand that, I used to switch easily between websites, campaigns, SEO, now I sat down last week to start a website and blanked. I think it's burnout, you still know the technical stuff but it takes longer to get going. I'm exploring how to get out of that and just go back to talking, like we're doing here.

Kevin Mooney: When Mabel was born, my testosterone tanked, probably from a lot of factors, closing the agency at the end of '23, Mabel born January 8th, then six months later she fell down the stairs and had surgery, she's fine, but I wasn't. I wasn't really working, drifted back into taking website jobs. My testosterone dropped to like a 75-year-old's level, down from the 400-700 range most men my age have. Brain fog, getting sick twice a month, a stomach bug that became presumed COVID that became pneumonia, six or seven weeks not leaving bed, never fully recovered, aching body, couldn't recover from workouts, no gains. I've been lost and confused since, some clarity came at 25, launching this personal brand and falling back into agency-style work with better clients. But the whole time I've told myself I don't want to do this anymore, don't want to build another website where the client doesn't even know what to put on it and then bitches at me. My short-term goal with this podcast is sharpening the tools I had at the agency's peak, selling six-figure projects, the fun part, minus doing all the work myself, project management, creative, strategy, and managing a team. Starting Kevin Mooney solo, I'm doing sales, strategy, and project management again, same cycle. So this podcast is to sharpen skills and figure out if maybe I'm actually great at making content, if people want to hear what I have to say, and get back to what feels natural. I'm inspired by how you've given your thing space instead of going direct to the sale, I don't want to do that either.

Cara Steinmann: There's pressure to always have a plan and know where you're going, that's harmful, especially mid-life when you don't always know. Giving yourself space to play, to do something you love, having conversations, contributing value, just put it out there and see what happens. Maybe it blows up, or maybe you talk to someone who helps you get an epiphany. Have you asked ChatGPT what you should do with your life based on your human design and CliftonStrengths? I've thrown clients' CliftonStrengths in and asked what they should be doing based on their strengths, and the answer's usually in there somewhere.

Cara Steinmann: At this point in my life it matters to me to do something purposeful and meaningful, moving toward something better in the world, maybe a legacy thing. I used to feel, working in marketing, like, how is selling sorority merch making the world better, how am I contributing, working for clients I don't even believe in. My son informed me "sus" is out now, it's cringe, I'm so behind on the language.

Kevin Mooney: That's another reason I have to get out of marketing, I can't keep up with the generations, the really good marketers have their finger on that pulse, I don't.

Cara Steinmann: Part of the problem with marketing too is I'm tired of being sold to, tired of the social media pressure. On our anniversary trip Jeremy and I said let's take pictures to post, and neither of us posted a single thing, why does everybody need to know I'm having a great trip.

Kevin Mooney: Right, isn't that great. There's a lot of marketing buzzwords I'm allergic to, purpose-driven being one, heard it, got it, check. But I'll share a story that made me the happiest I've been in five years of this work. I have a DPC doctor, direct primary care, membership-based medical practice. I've been a member four or five years, small local practice, she brought me in nine months ago for a small side project, I kept at her about wanting to be part of the bigger picture, and I sold her on a fractional CMO role. We ran brand strategy, messaging exercises, target audience work, and yesterday I presented her new brand identity, she and her assistant cried during the presentation, I got emotional too, maybe the testosterone supplements, told Marcelle about it that night and she got emotional too, seeing me build the logo and saying this is so perfect for them. This is the only kind of engagement I want going forward. I don't want another client who just wants me to sell pickleball rackets, I don't care about the rackets. I guess I'm a purpose-driven marketer after all.

Cara Steinmann: I hate to tell you, Kevin, but I think you're purpose-driven, or maybe values-driven, you care about that company and believe in what they're doing, it feels good to get behind something you're invested in. Don't be embarrassed by that.

Kevin Mooney: I've never said it out loud, I always scoff at the buzzwords, but it's real. The biggest thing with that engagement is transparency from the start, it's her practice, she's 100% owner, she's been transparent the whole time, I'll ask for a certain amount, she'll say she doesn't have that much, can I take less, yes, right level of transparency. Other clients, you find out six months in who's really pulling the strings, told upfront I don't deal with boards, then six months later the board would like to see this, that's not transparency. I need that level of honesty to trust and produce quality work, it's a full-body yes or full-body no thing.

Cara Steinmann: The word attached to transparency for me is authenticity, which people also think is a played-out buzzword. When I had my meltdown in 2020 figuring out what to do with my life, I identified my core values for the first time, one of mine is authenticity, and it's actually comprised of three things, transparency, vulnerability, and integrity. Integrity doesn't mean morals exactly, it means wholeness, showing up as your whole self, not shaving pieces off to fit the situation.

Kevin Mooney: That's interesting, because I hate the word authenticity precisely because everybody says it without knowing what it means, and you just broke it into three real components.

Cara Steinmann: Working in marketing, I spent a lot of time missing all three, you shave off bits of yourself, it's manipulative, marketing can feel really manipulative.

Kevin Mooney: Not just doing it, but being around it, working with other marketing colleagues doing what everyone else does, not authentic. I remember when we were working together, Hound and you, you gave us safe examples of your work and we kept pushing back, and then one day you got fed up and wrote us a letter, and we were like, that's exactly what we want, that's the one, still think about that moment. You'd fallen into giving us what you thought we wanted, a slice of you, until that letter, which was all of you.

Cara Steinmann: That's what it feels like working in a space that doesn't feel good, trying to guess what people want instead of showing up whole because they might not buy it. But that's ultimately what you have to do, be just as picky as they are, show up with your whole self and say, I only work with clients who have transparency, who do something I can respect, or I won't give you my talents no matter the pay.

Kevin Mooney: I'm guilty, been hungry enough to take things I didn't want to keep the lights on. Moving forward I need to start saying, I'm not working with anyone who doesn't meet this bar, because of exactly what happened with the DPC doctor, total trust, made her cry from joy, that's a wild testimonial, I made a client cry, not from anger or sadness.

Cara Steinmann: That's the kind of client who refers you to more people like her, birds of a feather.

Kevin Mooney: That's what I want going forward, someone paying me to have fun, not just to produce. Yes I produce things, but you have to give me the freedom, meaning develops on its own if I believe in the company. Sure the meaning is great upfront when it's there, but I'll snuff off 99.99% of potential clients holding out for it, so I leave a little room for meaning to develop.

Cara Steinmann: The biggest thing is you need to work the way you work best, people have to trust you. Toward the end of my marketing days I'd tell clients upfront, I might change my mind mid-retainer because I'll gather new information and reach different conclusions, I don't do rigid six-month plans well, that doesn't work with really conscientious clients who want a plan and want to stick to it and finish it, that's not me, I'll pivot, I hate that word but I'll say it.

Kevin Mooney: Fair, honestly with the golf club we made a plan and mostly stuck to it, but on specific creative and tactical execution I said no, we need to deviate, shift direction, and it caused friction, higher-ups saying this isn't what we agreed to, but I had a feeling. To their credit they stuck with me, and it blew up in a good way, more leads than they knew what to do with, though the relationship got a little tarnished along the way. That's how I operate everywhere in my life, if I drive home a different way because it felt right, that's allowed, I can't be boxed into one way of doing things. I think what happens running solo, wearing every hat, is in a sales call you forget everything you actually care about, transparency, not being boxed in, you revert to what do you need, how do I fix it, and lose it all.

Cara Steinmann: It's hard, I love a good puzzle too, I know I can figure it out, give me enough time, even if it's not the right puzzle to solve, I want a shot at solving it.

Kevin Mooney: Yeah, for sure. I'm excited for this new chapter, talking to cool people, entrepreneurs are fun to talk to, you've shifted direction 37 times since I've known you.

Cara Steinmann: Probably will do 37 more. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to get paid to play golf. My girlfriend I golf with is a content machine, we have so much video of us being stupid on the course, dancing, I've thought about a TikTok, women-centric golf content, talk about how hard it is to find women to play with. Our pickleball team name is Luck of the Balls, which also works for golf. But content creation is a lot of work and I've never loved publishing myself, I have one TikTok post, of my dog. I've also thought about a clothing line, a convertible tank top with a detachable collar you take off after the first tee, or now I'm thinking just a standalone detachable collar you tuck into any shirt.

Kevin Mooney: Love it, perfect, off you go, great way to get paid to golf.

Cara Steinmann: I don't think it bothers most people as much as it bothers me though.

Kevin Mooney: Why are we such assholes about this stuff, stuck in our ways, I won't wear a collared shirt and other people are fine with it.

Cara Steinmann: There's an actual psychological thing here, used to be called Persistent Demand Avoidance, PDA, common in ADHD, if you were already planning to do something and someone tells you to do it, suddenly you don't want to. They've renamed it Persistent Desire for Autonomy, kinder framing. Jeremy and I fight about this, even if I'm already on my way to do something, if he tells me I have to, I won't now.

Kevin Mooney: Fuck you, don't tell me what to do, sounds a lot like me. Is this a disease, does it develop?

Cara Steinmann: A personality quirk probably, tied to neurodiversity, people with autism and ADHD often have it strongly, everybody's a little bit on the spectrum honestly.

Kevin Mooney: I wonder if I'm autistic, Marcelle jokes it's her autism coming out and I tell her she can't say that, not fair to actually autistic people.

Cara Steinmann: She might be a little, we're all a little, the spectrum isn't a flat line, more like a big circle with a tiny dot in the middle that society wants everyone to fit into, but every experience, trauma big or small, sickness, anything, shapes your neurology from birth, so everyone's neurodiverse to some degree, just distributed around that circle. I'm closer to ADHD than autism, but I have things, like if my clothing's uncomfortable it's all I can think about.

Kevin Mooney: I've lived my whole life this PDA way, my parents always said I'd do the opposite of whatever I was told or whatever society suggested. Early on I chalked it up to being an ENTP. It's not extreme, like Marcelle suggesting I see friends and me refusing out of spite, it's more like, in marketing, everyone says content, content, content is king, and I think, fuck you, I'm not doing content.

Cara Steinmann: Same with Instagram for my business, I refused to post regularly and went fully referral-based instead out of spite basically.

Kevin Mooney: Watch me win without doing what you say. There's something fucked up about that though, it boxed the agency into doing nothing, no advertising, no marketing, no social, no networking, no industry meetups, and we probably had the best creative work in Central Oregon, matched bigger Portland agencies, and nobody knew, nobody saw, nobody cared. That attitude is genuinely detrimental if you have it.

Cara Steinmann: It's shot me in the foot plenty of times too.

Kevin Mooney: I'm actively working my way out of it now, more as a mental health exercise than a money thing at this point, doing this podcast is proof of that.

Cara Steinmann: Have you done the Gretchen Rubin Four Tendencies quiz? People fall into upholders, motivated by both internal expectation and external commitments, obligers, motivated primarily by others' expectations, questioners, motivated only by internal logic, won't do something unless it makes sense to them after asking all the questions, and rebels, motivated by neither, their motto is you can't make me and neither can I. I suspect you and I are both rebels.

Kevin Mooney: Sounds like me, though the questioner piece fits too, I do question everything, survey the world, gather information, compare it to my own feelings, and I might sit on a decision for years until it's the right time or it just falls into place, which is a bit of both rebel and questioner.

Cara Steinmann: I wish I could sit on things like that, I'm impulsive, I just do it, traded all my clubs in 24 hours, thank God it's working out so far.

Kevin Mooney: There are pros and cons, some people see that waiting period as indecisive.

Cara Steinmann: Look at this podcast, you sat on it a long time gathering information.

Kevin Mooney: I've technically been saying I'd start a podcast for seven years without ever recording anything.

Cara Steinmann: When you told me about it six or eight months ago, you'd been researching equipment, waiting for the right time, collecting information until it coalesced.

Kevin Mooney: That affects my relationships in solo work life too, I'll tell a brand strategy client it'll take a month, when the actual working process takes a couple of days, I need the calendar time to sit with it first, then build it in a day. The whole time I'm in the shower thinking about it, driving the long way home thinking about it, walking the dog, playing with the kids, it's percolating in the background. That pisses people off, they want things fast and don't understand paying for that. You're a P in Myers-Briggs, right? Ps sit with things, Js just decide and go, and my wife's a J, we clash on this constantly. It's not stupidity or indecision, I need more data, more time, it has to become its thing, it's not there yet.

Cara Steinmann: I'm ENFP, that tracks. I used to do that with blog posts, research a topic then walk away for a week, let it marinate in the shower, walking the dog, and by the time I sat down to write it was basically already composed in my head, took 20 minutes.

Kevin Mooney: It's weird, I don't know how Marcelle puts puzzle pieces together so fast, scary fast, works great for her as a corporate executive, her intuition and feeling paired with her judging trait, judging meaning decisiveness not judgment of people, lands the right decision almost every time.

Cara Steinmann: Are you guys very different?

Kevin Mooney: 100% different on our letters, she's INFJ, smallest personality type group, around 1%, I'm ENTP, also relatively small, maybe 15%. INFJ and ENTP happen to be considered a classic ideal match, but honestly the differences clash constantly, some weeks are rough and we're not sure how to get out of it, but we love each other and keep working at it, remembering we're 100% opposite even with a lot of shared interests.

Cara Steinmann: Jeremy and I are very different too, in a lot of the same ways probably, but our values being so aligned at the core keeps us together, politically aligned, fundamentally aligned, we just operate completely differently, give us the same problem and we'll approach it two totally different ways but get there.

Kevin Mooney: If Marcelle and I say the same words, they mean something different to each of us individually, she'll realize what I heard wasn't even in the ballpark of what she meant. It's a miracle humanity functions at all given 16 types, infinite variation within each, nature versus nurture, and then you add male versus female into the same personality type and the traits show up completely differently. A male with the feeling trait doesn't always know how to handle it, living in emotional land while a thinker stays logical, that's why you see men skew thinking and women typically skew feeling, though that depends who you ask politically. When those cross, a female thinker gets called a robot lady, a male feeler is the touchy-feely hugger everyone's confused by, while two thinkers just go sup dude, knuckles.

Cara Steinmann: There's a correlation with CliftonStrengths too, the odds of your top five strengths landing in the exact same order as somebody else's are something like one in 39 million, extend that across all 34 themes plus your personal experience, gender, trauma, work history, and basically nobody in the world approaches things exactly like you. Think about that for business, nobody's going to build a brand the way you would.

Kevin Mooney: I've said that before and it's a terrible sales pitch, nobody's going to do it like me because I'm the only me, if you like me, hire me, if not, go find someone else. The gurus would say something more polished, but I lose the script in sales meetings and just say the honest thing.

Cara Steinmann: We entrepreneurial types hate begging for anything, I hope I never have to sit in another interview convincing someone why I'm the right choice, I'm probably not, honestly, you'll be sorry you hired me.

Kevin Mooney: Probably not, the odds of you liking how I work and communicate are slim to none, you should probably not hire me.

Cara Steinmann: The odds of me doing what I'm told are equally slim, let's get that out of the way.

Kevin Mooney: Classic. This is why I love the assessments, of course I'm a terrible employee, I have strategy really high, if someone tells me to do something I want to know why, there might be a smarter, faster way, and if it's not efficient, like that golf rule about the tree wells, I sat the ladies league down after my third time playing and said we need to talk, we need to change this rule, and it turned out I wasn't the only one who thought it was terrible, but employers don't love that.

Cara Steinmann: I used to call myself unemployable, broken in that way, terrible at being employed. I wish someone had told me younger, maybe you're not broken, maybe you're just highly entrepreneurial, that's a totally different frame. I spent years feeling like an asshole for not being able to do what I was told.

Kevin Mooney: You're very employable, it just takes someone far enough outside the little circle of what people should look and act like to want exactly that in their company, somebody who breaks rules, thinks freely. But most people want to stay inside the bubble because they've seen success there, Nike's successful so we do exactly what Nike says, except Nike wouldn't have been founded by people doing exactly what Nike says today. I've sat with CEOs who half believe what I'm saying and half don't, and ultimately don't want someone like me on the team because I'll cause trouble, say something off-color, pose a crazy idea, or it seems like it'll take too long and cost too much to develop my ideas. I don't fault them, I just notice it, you need a little crazy in you to want crazy me on your team.

Cara Steinmann: The very definition of having an employee is controlling what they do, and people like us are hard to control, which makes sense, I wouldn't hire me either unless you actually wanted to let me do my own thing, which isn't going to happen.

Kevin Mooney: Let me tell you this quick story, real fast, that's an oxymoron. I was hired for a website, and the first meeting before I got paid was with the client's software vendor who handled their booking system. I realized quickly they were doing something illegal, sending credit card info via JavaScript and GET requests to their server, not PCI compliant, before forwarding it to the payment processor. I asked some probing questions during the call and got a bad feeling, called the owner afterward and said I think this is illegal and you've been doing it two years, I won't put my name on this site, won't be complicit. He was very thankful, it blew the whole situation open, the software vendor turned out to basically be a guy in a van with a partner living out of the country, super sketchy. I lost a $15,000 website over it, but that's how my brain works, picking everything apart as we go. I don't know the moral exactly, except I'm going to cause some shit, in a good way.

Cara Steinmann: You're not going to just sit there and do what you're told without thinking. Systems like unquestioning capitalism only work if everyone stays in their place and doesn't rock the boat, so of course you're going to be a problem, no thinking allowed over here, Kevin.

Kevin Mooney: Yep, just do, that's all they want.

Cara Steinmann: Just do what you're told so we can produce things and make money.

Kevin Mooney: It's a real thing. So what do you think, Cara, we're at about three hours.

Cara Steinmann: Three hours? Well, I hope there are some nuggets in here you can use.

Kevin Mooney: No nuggets, we're putting the whole thing up, minus the technical glitches.

Cara Steinmann: I think it was fun talking, you're going to have some really interesting conversations.

Kevin Mooney: I hope so, this went into golf for a long time but I'm interested in golf, don't care, it was a blast.

Cara Steinmann: You never know where we're going to land.

Kevin Mooney: Let's say our goodbyes, and we'll stay on for a few minutes after. Cool, thanks, bye everybody.

Cara Steinmann: Okay, goodbye, thanks for having me.