Adam Quiney-Executive Coach and Author

Jason Frazell: 0:12

My guest today is Adam Coiny. Adam Coiny is an executive coaches and leadership development. He's a very, very soon to be published author, the former and I think a lot of people say recovering attorney, I hear that term thrown around quite a bit. You might, because you're not watching this, you won't know this. But if you see pictures of Adam, he's a killer tattoo aficionado. He is committed to real transformation for people. And I think in a first for the show, Adam, you are the second spouse to be on, because I had your wife on with our mutual friend Laura Westman. Her name is babe she was on. I think that episode released about two and a half, three months ago where I interviewed the two of them together because they're podcasters. They're both coaches. And now finally, she let you come on the show. If I'm under if I'm understanding, right, is that how it went?

Adam Quiney: 1:02

She set a high bar for me. And it's probably impossible for me to reach that bar. So it's safe for me to come on the show.

Jason Frazell: 1:07

Well, we stopped we talked a lot about Star Trek and Disney, which will not shock you guys. So I hope you're ready for that. But we'll probably take a little bit of a different route today. So Adam, where are you joining us from today?

Adam Quiney: 1:20

I live in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia, which is on an island off the west coast of Canada.

Jason Frazell: 1:26

Yes, I've heard it is quite stunning. Amazing. Very opposite where we are. I'm on the East Coast. And right now it is dark gray skies and pouring down rain. So if you hear a thunderstorm, everybody listening, it's because it's a thunderstorm. We're gonna record anyway. So and we got a whole lot to talk about today. So let's kick it off. What's something that you nerd out about?

Adam Quiney: 1:47

Well, transformation in general, I really like I'm fascinated by let me just get my hands around it. You don't need to understand good, like transformational coaching or whatever for it to work for you. In fact, like the intellectual part of it can kind of get in the way of it. But that's available to like if you want you can think about this stuff and create concepts and models and understand like, Why does x lead to why and how do we become the way we are. So I like both aspects of that. I'm a total consumer of this work in that I work with my coach and practice setting my intellect aside and just creating breakthroughs. And then I'm also like, this is so fascinating how humans develop and evolve and why X leads to why I want to know all of it. So I'm a nerd about that. And then more traditionally nerdy I'm a giant nerd for Magic the Gathering.

Jason Frazell: 2:37

Magic the Gathering. Hmm. I've had a number of d&d people on I'm trying to think of I says, you'll be episode about 140. I'm trying to think if I've had anybody. Yes, I did have somebody in season two, who is also Magic the Gathering, which is funny when I ask this question, because some people just take it as what do you really like? And other people take this? Like, what's the thing that actually a lot of other people that think is nerdy? So do you play the game? Do you play the actual cards?

Adam Quiney: 3:04

Yep, yeah, I've got a whole bunch. No one's gonna be able to see this. But you and I, but I've got a whole bunch of cards decks that I'm in the process of building and making just on my other desk over here to the side.

Jason Frazell: 3:15

Wow. The only thing I know like I'm, I'm a big video gamer, Sam. So the only thing I know about Magic the Gathering is what I know through like Hearthstone and kind of those models and clients from The Witcher that are you plant where you like match these cards, but it's all based on kind of that idea, right? That you're matching cards and cards can dispel each other and all those sorts of things.

Adam Quiney: 3:36

Yeah, magic was kind of like the first that are game if you like, and then all that stuff came about what what video games? What kind of video games do you play? It's important for our audience.

Jason Frazell: 3:45

It is important for our audience. Well, this is a tough question because I play video games. I mean, this year, I mean, I played Elden ring, just like everybody on the planet played Elden ring if you have a system. I'm playing I play a gentleman who played Madden, although I'm not really sure this year if I'm going to play Madden, just because it's not that great anymore, because I'm a big NFL guy. I play I play almost every triple A game that gets rated well, and then I really liked some cool indie games. Like there's been a lot of great indie games this year that I like playing, like tunic has been great. And I'm an Xbox Game Pass subscriber where you're like, Hey, I'm paying $15 a month. There's like four things I can try. And with no stakes. I don't have to spend any money out if I don't like it. I do it versus Oh, I just spent $70 on this game that I ended up not liking. So yeah, I'm a I mean, I've been a gamer since I was probably seven or eight years old. It's kind of my favorite thing to do. If I'm not working or playing guitar. I'm probably gonna be playing video games.

Adam Quiney: 4:38

Yeah, yeah. When I when we were kids, because we were probably around the same age. You got the game and then no matter how good or bad the game was, for me, at least you played it because that's, that's it? Yeah, like this game sucks, but I'm gonna play it. And I'm know you'd be having that much fun, but that's what I'm gonna do. Yeah,

Jason Frazell: 4:56

I remember. We had that we had a Commodore 64 I'm 44 so I would have been when I was maybe like 12. And I remember we would go to the library, and we get the floppy disk and you could check them out and you could do it. And now it's just so bad and so good at the same time, you'd be like, You know what, Adam, I feel like playing this game you feel like playing skim. Cool. Let me download it on my fiber, high speed fiber network. Oh, you know what, I have a 50 gig game game in like, 10 minutes I can play it's really good slash bad. But as I always say to my wife, it's, it's a very low stakes hobby, especially as a spouse because you know where I am. I'm in the basement on front of the TV. And you know, I'm not spending a lot of money and I spend it once and then it's a it's a sunk cost. I'm not a it's not a recurring cost. Unless Yes, unless you're on a free to play model. But we'll have to do our our video game podcast and another time I was Come on, that's coming in a race like okay, we're, we're gonna we might tune out. So let's do

Adam Quiney: 5:50

they've already turned this pod this episodes already been turned off. Yeah. Like magic

Jason Frazell: 5:55

the gathering and video games. What is this crap other words? So Adam, what's something that is inside of your comfort zone that you know, other people either won't do? Or it's just a no, it's usually no for them or they're scared to do?

Adam Quiney: 6:09

Yeah, an easy one is public speaking. I'm I have a lot of ease speaking publicly. I didn't always but that's something that turns out these days comes very natural, and I'm very comfortable doing.

Jason Frazell: 6:21

Yeah. Was I mentioned this at the beginning. You are a former attorney. Were you a litigator? Were you in front of people in a courtroom? So you were I didn't stick with it too long. But I did speak in court while he did. So you're, you're just pushing paper on? That's yeah, that's right. Here's the thing

Adam Quiney: 6:35

that's inside my comfort zone that's a little less traditional, which is I'm very comfortable. pursuing my own style and doing things like wearing scarves during summer or stuff like that. Yes, definitely something that's outside. Especially for men, a lot of men's comfort zone fits well inside mine. It's,

Jason Frazell: 6:52

this is a good example of outside of my comfort zone, pretty much because I hate being hot that morning. I'm from Minnesota originally. So I'm an honorary Canadian. What I've been told many times. Oh, yeah. The idea of wearing a scarf. When it's hot just makes I'm getting sweaty thinking about it like you do you man. But that is definitely outside. It's purely out

Adam Quiney: 7:13

of my name is off of you. It actually cools you down. This is the secret hack. But I get it I get it. It is comfort zone share. Yeah. Talk about

Jason Frazell: 7:20

comfort zones. Interesting. flipside of that question, Adam, what's something that you know, that is you were really outside, it's outside of your comfort zone? Not something you want to do where you will do and you know, for a fact that there's other people that are like, hell, yeah, that's me. I'm in.

Adam Quiney: 7:36

Yeah, most adrenaline sports. So like skydiving? Definitely wingsuiting. A lot of like bike tricks and stuff like that. And then a more sort of less obvious one would probably be going and asking people specifically like making a specific request for support. That would be something like, Can you lend me $100? Or can you do X, Y, and Zed? For me? Those would be outside of my comfort zone? For sure.

Jason Frazell: 8:06

Will you? Will you do the second one? Like asking for specific support? Will you do it when needed?

Adam Quiney: 8:13

Yeah, I mean, it's a practice, right. All coming on always is. And so I'm, yeah, I mean, this book that we're going to talk about is, yeah, it's been a place where I've been engaging in practicing that, which is, I can't, I could buy 100 copies of the book myself. But that's cheating. And that's not what I'm about. And that's not going to create what I want to create in the world. And so it's sort of like, well, you can let the book sort of sit in obscurity, or you can start to take this on out and create the breakthrough. And so I'm in the practice of working with. I've been doing that in other places, too, because it's just, I'm committed to something bigger than what doing it all on my own allows for.

Jason Frazell: 8:51

Yeah, do you remember? So Adam and I, we, we've been trained at the same place. Do you remember the the exercise where you're asked to go out and ask for $1 from people?

Adam Quiney: 9:02

I do, I hated it. I

Jason Frazell: 9:03

couldn't do it. It was the one thing it was the one thing we were asked to do in that whole 12 months that I was like, I actually couldn't do it. Because I spent 20 years in sales and the idea that people are going to give you money for absolutely nothing but just being a person. I'm like, like, I had a huge blocker. And I remember talking about this when he came back and I was just like, I can't do it. Like I actually had, I mean, I could have probably forced myself. But other people had all sorts of other things that were wildly uncomfortable. Most of the other stuff because I was working with a coach. I was like, this is easy. Yeah. And then that thing it got me it's like there's always something that gets you that thing got me big time and

Adam Quiney: 9:42

I remember that feeling because I used to like to dress nice suit. Maybe like a casual nice like tie with it, whatever. And so I felt like first of all just like a dickhead going in. Oh yeah. People for $1 we also giving dollars that was easier for me to handle someone. Oh, yeah. Like, the moment that really Got me and had me create quite a bit of empathy with beggars, I guess we'll call them homeless. Someone asking for money was I went up to this, it was two women. And I said, Hey, do you either if you have $1 I could have, and the one of them stopped. And she looked at me. And then she said, No, thank you. And they walked off. And I was just like, oh, frig you I was so annoyed that she said, No, thank you. Like she didn't even address. Yeah, words, I'd spoken to her right. And I was just like, oh, boy, this this really suck. So yeah, that was a really challenging exercise.

Jason Frazell: 10:30

Oh, man. All right, and I'm on the subject of public speaking. They do a lot of it, as you mentioned. So if I give you five minutes, you could speak about anything you want, the entire world gets to hear it and understand it. What would you speak on? And at the end of your five minutes? What would be your call to action to all of us?

Adam Quiney: 10:54

Well, it would probably change moment by moment. Like, I mean, the obvious thing would be that I would probably speak on leadership, because I think it's such an important topic. And it's important not because like our political system is falling apart, or because there's all this strife in the world. That's all true. There's a lot of stuff going on. That's not good. It's important, because we believe that's what's important about leadership is like we should talk about leadership because our leaders are failing. We should talk about leadership, because it's a personal thing. And when we talk about, like when we really get into like deep ontological, which is to say like, leadership has a quality of being, when we talk about that, it empowers all of us to rise up beyond kind of where we get stuck in our lives. And if we each individually, start to come more from a place of our own personal inner leadership, all of that other stuff, I really believe starts to take care of itself. It's like the ultimate grassroots, it works its way out, it percolates. And so that's probably what I would talk about, absent any kind of, you know, in a vacuum, what would the call to action be, it would probably be like, take on getting supported. Like, we really have this we'll call it a context, we have this belief, and like actions we take from that belief in this world that, like, it's a good thing to have it all handled yourself. And it's weak to ask or receive support, and you know, all of that kind of stuff. And to, to be able to ask for and receive support. And I'm recognizing, you know, I've just acknowledged that's a challenge for me, but like that, that's where we all really grow. Because I can pick you up and you can pick the person and help pick me up and I can help pick, you know, like, there's this beautiful way that kick comes back around, we can all pick each other up.

Jason Frazell: 12:46

Yeah, yeah. I thought for a minute you were going to say and my call to action be giving me $1, which had been, it's been a great, which would have been great. Yeah, that'd be a great call back. Well, before we go to the commercial, Adam, you know, I'd mentioned I'm from Minnesota, and I grew up in a very Midwestern culture, which is, you go to the, you're willing to help everybody else. But over here, there's nothing needed. And I don't know if that's a similar in a similar how to how you were raised or how you grew up. But that's a hard thing to break, it's still a thing that and also being in sales and you running, you know, you run your business, I run my own business. On the outside, people think you have to have a handle a lot of the time, like the idea that you have to hire a coach or go and get some marketing strategy. It a lot of people see that as a portrayal of something that makes you weak. And I really, and I say this, because I compliment you is to be able to make normalize that actually there isn't, we don't do it on our own. I think we all actually, we all know that we don't do it on our own. But then when we go and ask for help a lot in a lot of industries and lots of types of things. It's like it's a thing that is frowned upon.

Adam Quiney: 13:59

Yeah, we intellectually know intellectually that we don't do it on our own. But the trouble is, intellectually, knowing something is the booby prize. It's so easy to know stuff. That's why Yeah, Facebook and LinkedIn are rife, they're replete, I'm super pleased to use that word they're replete with, like, stuff that we know to be true, totally when it leadership happens in the moment and is an experience and so you know, we were aware of supports important but when it comes time to ask for it, we're like, maybe I'll go back and post another mean, and that, you know, that we get a lot of leaders doing exactly what you've described, which is trying to give to the world something they're unwilling to receive. Yeah, so give support but been unwilling to ask for and receive it. And the impact of that is that when what they give us doesn't really land it doesn't feel that good. It feels like there's a power imbalance or stuff like that and like oh, they're they're giving to me, but they believe asking for and receiving support is weak. And so I What does it I'd say about me. And even if none of that is communicated verbally, energetically, that happens that is exchanged is transmitted through our being. And so, yeah, that's where leadership falls down.

Jason Frazell: 15:11

Yeah. For right before we go to commercial break, as an executive coach, you're working with people of high levels inside of organizations, but likely some of them. I don't know this to be true, likely some of them and some more hierarchical organizations, what would you say to somebody listening, because that's the kind of leader I want to be, but my culture in my company does not allow for that. Because there are still companies out there that asking for help is not like you're supposed to handle your business? Hmm. Well, what do you what do you say to those types of clients?

Adam Quiney: 15:40

Yeah, I would say there's always a reason, why not do the thing that's going to be edgy for you. So like, first of all, it can be really helpful for people to shift the context and understand the reason I'm in a culture where that is not supported, is because that's what's comfortable for me. First and foremost. So what that does is it frames it more like, Oh, I'm here because it allows me to continue not pushing into the edge of asking for support. And then second is do it anyway. So what you're going to ask people, Hey, could you support me and they're going to judge you for being weak? Great, keep doing it and show them that you're not weak. If we're willing to stand in this different belief, ourself, then over time as we practice, either we're going to leave a culture that's not supporting us anyhow, and finds the right does, or we're going to start to change, we're going to tell the soil so to speak, we're going to start to turn over. And that's where personal leadership is so important, because we start to be the change, and that culture starts to shift. Surprisingly, as you are willing to keep acting out in the face of your resistance and the resistance of the culture you've created around you.

Jason Frazell: 16:44

Yeah. Beautiful, Adam. We're gonna take a brief commercial break. We'll be right back. All right, Adam, we are back. What else do you want us to know about you?

Adam Quiney: 16:58

Like fun Adam facts. You want some fun, Adam facts?

Jason Frazell: 17:00

What do you want to give us? Um,

Adam Quiney: 17:06

I guess I'll share, I don't have anything prepared. Some fun facts. I'll tell you what I'll share about kind of my journey as a dancer. So I'll try to share this fairly quickly. But it mirrors my journey as a leader and as a man fully expressed on this planet. So in the early days, I saw people breakdancing in my school gym, and it was all the cool kids. And I was like, that's amazing. But I was a nerd. I played Magic the Gathering the library. And so I definitely didn't get to go partake with them. And over time, I discovered not breakdancing, but a style of dance called popping and locking bunch of styles. Really cool. And so I learned these by myself in secret. With my best friend, we practice and get down in front of a mirror and we watch videos back when you had VHS tapes. Yeah. And what happened is, I became very exquisite in my technique. It was I was very good at technique, because that's all I practiced, but I would never go out and practice it, or sorry, and dance. And eventually, I started to do that. And what you would see if you watched me was like, perfect technique without any harder soul. So I like my moves like spot on, but there was no like, there's no magic to it. There was no soul of the music in it, there was just someone doing moves overtop of music, or like, yeah, kind of at the same time. And what happened is I went and trained with the founders of these styles had the honor to do this. And I was thinking, they're going to show me the technique I haven't got yet that's going to make everything fit together. And I was really annoyed, because they just had us doing bullshit, like the funky chicken for like five minutes. Or like the Bart Simpson or all these social dances. And I remember feeling like, oh, this is so annoying. Why are we doing this? Why does it feel so fun?

Jason Frazell: 18:53

Dancing, this isn't supposed to be fun,

Adam Quiney: 18:55

shouldn't enjoy this. And what started to happen was the soul got brought into my dance and that journey that arc. I mean, there's more to it. But I'm going to sort of stop it there and say that arc is really like a significant part of what my arc as a human being has been, where I kind of learned to operate largely from my head, I have a huge heart and I'm quite spiritual, but I shut both of those things down just to live from my head. And so I began a lot of this work, like head focused, and how do i Master intimacy? What are all the intricacies I can learn about to be intimate with my wife? And of course, as you can imagine, there's absolutely no intimacy in that. No. And so I just find I continue to relive that journey that just keeps being new places in my life where I'm like, Oh, I'm moving out of my head and into my heart and then into my soul and fascinating.

Jason Frazell: 19:47

That's really cool. Man. I love the way the universe works. Yeah, I was too. I was interviewing somebody else on this podcast this morning. That's going to be out shortly. And he's a fighter fighter, a former F 16, fighter pilot, author as well, fiction author. And he's a musician. And we were just talking about this very same concept as a musician, same thing. And he's a huge Stevie Ray Vaughan fan, and he's big blues guy. And he's like, and he was, he's good. But he's like when I realized that I'm never going to be Stevie Ray Vaughn. And I get to be me on the guitar. So much more fun. And just the idea that and you and I live in this space, it's always the next technique. The next mindset, this is the thing that's going to help my life all come together. And it sounds like we're aligned. I'm a big fan of there's no one right answer. And what might be the very best thing for Jason might be the worst thing for Adam. Yeah. And on and on, and on we go. And the idea that this is the right way to do it. And also, at the end of the day, I just love that because it's so funny. When you think of dancing, I think of dancing is like one of the most soul and heart based things you can do. Yeah. And man like that. Nobody's like, wow, that guy's technically really good dancer. You're like, wow, that dude's having a lot of fun. Yeah, I'm

Adam Quiney: 21:07

vibing. I'm what he's putting out vibe. And

Jason Frazell: 21:09

if I'm always putting out there, he's having a lot of fun. Yeah, you obviously have to do the practice. But that's a super interesting. So Adam, I want to ask you before we move on, have you asked me something? You remember the moment when you realize that being an attorney was just not the thing? Because and I asked this of people who have gone and had some advanced schooling, because that's going to be painful as hell to spend the time the energy, the money, the studying and go way this, isn't it? Do you remember what it was for you? Or like when it was? Or did it was at a specific moment? Or just the calling? Like,

Adam Quiney: 21:43

how was it for you things? Yeah, there's a few things. One was feeling like initially that the practice of law felt very noble to me like wow, you know, you stand for the importance of our our system that puts innocence before guilt, like innocent until proven guilty above all else, that and then you're standing for someone's right to due process, even when everyone else may have already judged them guilty that I was like, that's really noble and challenging, because the the weight of public opinion is a lot. But I started to have this experience like, yeah, that's noble in theory, but in practice, it turned out my experience was much more that you were just arguing for being right. And that what you were really doing typically would be, I'd witnessed attorneys, like take cases, and then use their brilliant lawyer mind to justify why in this convoluted manner, here's why what I'm doing is noble. So there's almost like, No, you can just put anything into this. That's not really what I think I was finding myself called to at first. The second thing was, I didn't find many lawyers at all that loved their jobs like that, really, there being was love. I found a great deal of lawyers that when I'd asked them, if they'd love their job, they would articulate to me really effectively, like a lawyer would, why they liked their job, or why they ought to love it. So I'd say like, Do you love your job? And they go, Well, here's the thing, I'd be like, that's already a misery, you're off to a bad start brother, right? I want spit to exit your mouth and land on my neck from your enthusiasm is, of course, pre COVID. So there were those two things. And then the last thing I'll share on this piece was when I realized probably not the career for me, also, the hours are miserable. I wasn't very interested in that. Yeah. The other thing that made it really hard was that, you know, my brother is a very successful radiologist. So way to go, he's sort of set a high bar, he's younger than me is even worse. And I was the lawyer. So it's in our family, like Way to go, you know, Mom and Dad, your two kids done the right things. And then here I am leaving a career where I've amassed a great deal of debt to go to school. And I'm stepping into a career that is like, you know, largely perceived as kind of loopy and wacky and, you know, there's a lot of nonsense in the profession because it doesn't have a high barrier to entry. It's a very low barrier to entry. And so the, the, I guess my projection of how my parents felt about it, and probably some of how they actually did feel about it. There's a lot of weight to that, that made it a really challenging decision.

Jason Frazell: 24:19

Yeah. And here we are. Yes. In the book coming out in two weeks, and all sorts of amazing things. All right, Adam. I'm a little I'm a little nervous right now. We'll see what we'll see what happens here. For those listening, Adam now has a kind of a shit eating grin on his face. And now we're gonna make we're gonna make the the host struggle. Adam, what? What what do you want to ask me that I can answer for you and for everybody listening

Adam Quiney: 24:50

what are you resisting or avoiding in your life right now?

Jason Frazell: 24:54

Oh, that's at a tactical level. I'm ready. This thing, getting some really not that challenging admin work done. Including, like things I need to do for my business, because I just despise it. And I have reached a point in my life where I don't really want to do anything I don't want to do this is my inner rebel. And it has to be like, it's one of those things, I can't even farm it out, like I actually have to do it. Right, because it's my business. So that's at a tactical level on a more on a more like ontological, like define for the, let's define for the audience, what ontology ontology is the study of being. So in Adams referring to ontology number 14, ontologies, we were trained, it's the, you know, an Adam, you've made some really good examples around this around being an ontological level, I'm definitely still resisting, finding the gold everywhere, I still have some really strong opinions in a lot of the places I'm in. And it's a little bit challenging for me, because some of the things I do in my business is really a lot of right. Strategy type stuff, right? Training, facilitation, teaching, or, Hey, we're going to do a marketing strategy, here's best practices, and it kind of, in a way, I need to show up as the experts want to get paid for. And where I resist the gold is, there could be well, where I resist the gold. And the output of that for me is then I end up showing up in spaces where there isn't quite as much of that context where I'm still kind of in that context. And then as we're talking, see, this is Adam coaching asked one question, then you'd sit here and talk for 20 minutes. The other thing I'm resisting is and I shared this with another coach is I'm resisting some really basic things that I knew would serve me like not having my calls going out or any long, any longer having to go 50 minutes, so they get the 10 minutes to, to shift out of that client into the next one. Some basic.

Adam Quiney: 26:58

What do you go longer than that? Like, why don't you go?

Jason Frazell: 27:02

Why don't I go longer than an hour? Know why,

Adam Quiney: 27:04

like, you're saying what would benefit us to stop earlier? And then you're not doing that? Like, what? How come?

Jason Frazell: 27:10

It's a great question. I think it's because I've always done it that way. And you just haven't ever. Like, oh, here's the way you do it. And by the way, I was trained and I just haven't done it. But nobody ever said this is the right way. Right? So oh, this is a way so that I just took that

Adam Quiney: 27:27

rather than like, they're gonna think I'm not providing enough value or any of that sort of stuff.

Jason Frazell: 27:31

No, no, it's not that I'm, I'm somebody like to land the plane on time. And also the kind of people that I work with, I mostly work with tech founders, they would be happy to do 50 minutes be like, great, we can get this done. It's 50. They're not. We're not having, you know, to our exploratory conversations unless they want to. So yeah, some some tactical things. There's some technical things on this podcast, I get done recording with you. Here's the list of three things I could do and within five minutes would make my life easier a month from now that I just don't do so. Funny how we are, isn't it? It is funny. It is funny. Here's a great question, Adam. Nobody's ever asked me that on here, which I'm not surprised about. Let's do another one. Hit me. Hit me, brother. What What else you got for me?

Adam Quiney: 28:11

Another question?

Jason Frazell: 28:13

Yeah, hit me with a question.

Adam Quiney: 28:16

Let's see. What is like? So you're working with people, you coach them, whatever. What's like a pattern of being or a way someone shows up? That is like, really, really hooky for you. Huh.

Jason Frazell: 28:34

When they play into my I know, you know, the right answer is hokey for me.

Adam Quiney: 28:39

Like they're seeking your kind of expert advice? Yeah. When to

Jason Frazell: 28:43

Yeah, this is what I spent 20 years getting paid to do, Adam so there's a lot more practice to that. That's one another one. It's hokey for me is there's a couple of topics that parenting because I'm a parent, parent of young children. So when people are like, Hey, I have a challenge with timing or this i That's it's really hard for me to stand outside of that. And I have a real challenge with health. When people I'm you know, like people have acts like when they actually have health things. I have a real challenge with those. So it's, there's both circumstantial, yeah. But especially during the pandemic, when people get Hey, I'd love to work with you, but I'm at home and my kids are like, I don't really know how to stand outside of that. And then we're in integrity walk in and watch my wife who works a full time job and me working full time job dealing with the exact same thing when you so it's hard it's like that's that's a little bit hokey, that's quite hooky for me. And then there was one more What's another one? People that complainers I can't stand complaining. Yeah. And I and I mean that from I complain to there's no I'm complaining about complainers. Yeah, I'm complaining

Adam Quiney: 29:58

for being judgmental. Yeah.

Jason Frazell: 30:00

Kathy's household judgmental people. It's not that I don't mind venting at like, I really don't mind venting, I've been told I'm pretty good at what I, it's not the complaining now that I talked about, it's the complaining with no interest in doing anything about it, besides just complaining again, and again. And again. That's what stopped me. And this has been, even prior to my coaching journey, even in my career, I would always, I'd be like, all you do is gossip at work, and you complain about your thing, but you don't do anything about it. So if you want to, you know, it's like, Be the change you want, or you have to be the change. Have your feelings, have your vent, be pissed off? That's human. That's normal. I actually like that. I like when people bring emotions. And now Adam and a few of my clients like, Hey, you just, you know, like, spend 10 minutes. That sounds good. What would you like to do about it? My favorite question and have people go, You know what, for today, and the next two days, nothing besides being pissed, like, cool, that's your choice. Nothing wrong with that. That's you and yeah, next week, what would you like to do about it? And just, you know, always have people flush that stuff out. And I think a lot of that comes from, again, the way I was raised, my parents are amazing. But there's definitely a level of my it's not my parents even just like helplessness, right? Like the idea that like you, it's done to you. You can't do anything about it. And I want to this is actually not my parents are not like that. But just a lot of the people I grew up with are that way. Yeah, for sure. And totally, you know, you take you take ownership, there are real things in this world. And at the same time, you can take ownership and you can at least try some different things. Then besides doing the exact same thing over and over again, because we know what's going to happen when you do that.

Adam Quiney: 31:32

Yeah. Cool. Good answer. Awesome. Questions. All right.

Jason Frazell: 31:35

I got the Adam seal of approval stamp stamp. Adam, what are you passionate about besides Magic, the Gathering and leadership development?

Adam Quiney: 31:45

Everything passion is part of who I am. So that in

Jason Frazell: 31:48

your essence words, yes, it is. Yeah, me too. It's my number one, actually.

Adam Quiney: 31:52

Hmm. Nice brother. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't that what that means, you know, in terms of like, how that manifests. I don't like stuff. I love it, dive headfirst into it. So what I'm currently passionate about is right now drumming. I'm really into drumming. You know what a cone is like a box you ever seen? Yeah. So I'm really Timon playing. I'm really into cocktails, craft cocktails. So we have a whichever pub in my house like a literal, if you saw it, you'd be like, Damn, that's literally a British pub in that room. The previous owner was an anglophile hardcore Brit. And he made this house and he was like, there's gonna be a pub in my house. So I over the pandemic really got into making good craft cocktails, very passionate about that. Just looking around my room to see what else I'm passionate about. Two of the things I'll share, I'm really passionate about one wheeling right now, which is, you and I were talking about this at the start kind of a single wheel with a almost like a skateboard balanced between it, which is amazing, super fun toy. And then the last thing I'm really passionate about right now is the the sort of, I guess, I call it like the Nexus maybe or the bridge between transformational coaching and leadership and plant medicine and indigenous teachings. So I Alaska and other plant medicines. I think when you combine those two things, and bridge them, there's absolute magic that happens. So I'm very passionate about being a bridge for the world, to start to experience both sides of what is there to be provided?

Jason Frazell: 33:29

Yeah, a lot of it. A lot of it kind of feels like it's you choose one or the other out there is kind of a lot of it's marketed. Either go have a spiritual journey and be awakened, then you don't need anybody or you work with somebody. And that's a Fufu. Well, yes, Adam, this seems like a really good time, because you're talking about essence talking about things you're passionate about in his passions, in your words, and it's also in mind, a really good time. If you'd be open to it. Let's talk about your book. What your book, yeah, let's talk about your book at a high level. For those who don't know about essence words, its survival mechanism. Let's, let's lay the groundwork here for the next few minutes as you talk with the concepts of concepts of the book. So Adam, when we talk about your higher trading, hey, we're both passionate in essence, what does that mean to the common person who has no idea what we're talking about? Yeah,

Adam Quiney: 34:17

so we would assert, since we are both, well, I'm going to use some jargon and then I'll clear it up. So since we are both ontologically focused meaning where we look as at who someone is being underneath whatever they're doing, we begin that work with an assertion and the assertion is that people have a fundamental nature to them upon like coming onto this planet. And we also assert that that fundamental nature is kind of, we can distinguish it using qualities of being so like generosity, spirituality, divinity, wisdom, brilliance, connection, passion, presence, radiance, these are all qualities of being and you can, if you're someone listening, you can and kind of get a sense of this, if you've ever spent time around toddlers, and sometimes on toddlers, we have this weird experience where we're with the kid, we're like, damn, this is so weird. But I feel like this kid's a wise old soul, which is a weird thing to say, until you come and look at it through this lens that we're talking about, which is to say, what you're getting from that kid is the experience of wisdom in their presence. And so we would say, everyone, everyone has all qualities of being available to them. But some of us have, all of us have strong suits, sort of like, I could wear my hair in any particular hair cut, but my hair naturally parts a particular way, we all have hair, but the parts kind of different. And so that's where we start, we've got this essential nature, this beautiful set of qualities that we share in common with certain people, and that we have kind of like a strong suit. That's what's natural. For me, it's natural for me to show up passionate, natural for me to bring a lot of brilliance into the space and to be witty and playful, and all of that sort of stuff. So that's the essence. Want me to go to the next thing from that?

Jason Frazell: 35:59

Well, yeah, let's talk about the other side, or the the concept of your book. And then I want to go back and use you as an example here, so that people can relate to brown rock. So what's the other side of that? Of the essence that that you talked about in the book as well?

Adam Quiney: 36:14

Yeah. So we come onto the planet, just like sort of already fully expressed. There's no stories that we've learned from society that it's wrong for you to cry at this time of night. There's no stories that we've learned that like, these people are scary, those people do this, it's weak to ask for support. It's wrong to do this, you know, whatever. But very quickly, we learn from the world around us that, oh, what comes naturally to me is not welcome in these situations. And in those other situations, we learn what comes naturally to me is not enough, I need to be even more so. So a really simple example would be like a child, going to school, the child's naturally got a lot of brilliance. And they come home with four A's and a B. And they're like, look, what I got mom and their parent who's really trying to raise the kid right, and really wants the kid to be successful in life. That's all the attention on the B, what happened here? What went wrong there? Why don't you have a pluses, blah, blah, blah. And so the child makes some assumptions, because that's all that we can do. They conclude, oh, I guess what came naturally to me wasn't good enough, I need to like lay into this, I gotta turn this up even higher. So what tends to happen in the model in this book that I've created, is that we, in some situations, learn to like over express ourselves. In some places, we learn to turn ourselves up to like, 12. It's like a hyper expression. And then in other places, we learn to turn down our light, we learned maybe around a parent too. If we are naturally you know, I've got a loud voice. And if I got a lot of training from my parents, that was like, be quiet, you're being too much you're showing off, I learned around certain situations that my natural presence in the space is too much. And so I learned in those places dim, my light, hide become small. So what happens is we learn this quite innocently and genuinely from people that are not genuinely, generally from people that love us and are trying to help us. We learn what's natural and innate, for me is not right in these situations. And I need to be more than I am naturally or less than I am naturally. And that starts a process that we carry on for the rest of our lives, we get better and better and better in those situations. That being too much or too little of what is natural for us.

Jason Frazell: 38:30

Yeah. Fascinating. Let's very fascinating. So let's take this Adam, let's take it back to passion. How does that I'm asking this because I'm the host, but I could easily share how this shows up for me too. And I will but give us an example from your life. How does the overclocking or underclocking of passion show up for you at the ripe age of whatever age you are exactly here today? How does this still show up for you? Because your assertion is this is always happening. I mean, yeah, like this is not a oh, I read Adams book or I got a coach and we worked through it and now I'm quote unquote, fixed or now I have better you have better noticing. But we're this is an automatic thing that we do as humans. It's what makes us human.

Adam Quiney: 39:14

Yeah, so like, like we just said, you know, I'm passionate is part of naturally who I am. So I love stuff I get like, Man, I want to know all about it. I don't just play video game. I read the strategy. I go on the wiki. I read every article about it. I read the trivia behind the game. What did the maker do before this, so on and so forth. So as a kid, I was given my brother and I were given an in tendo for Christmas one year dating myself. That's all good Nintendo ruled. And there's the original Nintendo the Nintendo Entertainment System

Jason Frazell: 39:42

and blow into

Adam Quiney: 39:44

the cartridges. That's right. Yeah, blow me and put it back in and somehow that works magically. And so I love that thing and played that close window here. played that game. Mario Brothers Duck Hunt. Bye Back then a lot. And then I beat the game. And my parents said, you know, when you beat that game, we'll buy you a new one, I was like, yay. And they bought me this new game Super Mario Brothers too. And I played the crap out of that. And I won that quite quickly, I'm just getting better. And what happened is my parents concluded one, because I would get kind of a bit in, what's the right word, like invested maybe a little, I need to win this game, I've got a little attached to it. And to because of how quickly I'd won the game, my parents concluded, he's, he's putting too much time into this, he's playing this too fast. And he gets kind of nasty, we don't like that, we're gonna sell his Nintendo taking it away. That's it. You could judge my parents for what they did, there might have been a better way. That's not really the point of the story. They were doing what they were doing from a place of loving parenthood. And they were doing the best they could see to do. So we let them off the hook, they did nothing wrong. What happened was, I concluded in that moment, the natural state of passion that's there. For me, that's dangerous. If I get to invest in my passion, I will lose the thing I'm passionate about. And so what I learned to do was when my passion flares up, start to lit it, start to pull it back down. So it's almost if you can imagine like a sine wave, and I know I'm drawing this with my hand, but you know, people will have to imagine a curve that goes up to one and then down to negative one and back up to one, one. And if that whole state is like, my fully expressed passion, happiness, sadness, whatever, what I learned to do is kind of flatten it. Consequently, in certain situations, where I really felt excited about stuff I would occur is very apathetic. People would experience me like, Oh, are you even excited about this? And I would experience myself kind of apathetic, which consequently, is an amazing skill for an attorney, you're unflappable, nothing's going to get you say, whatever you want, it's going to bounce right off of me.

Jason Frazell: 41:55

It's good for a salesperson as well, Adam,

Adam Quiney: 41:57

yeah, you can't book me you can't get me I'm calm seas the whole way through. So that we'll call it that, like, that thing. I learned that, that way of showing up. It's not all bad. Like you said, there's times like, if you're captaining a ship, and I'm on it, and we're on rough seas, I want you to be calm, I don't want you to be like, Ah, we're gonna die or whatever. So it's not that these tendencies we develop are bad. It's that they become automatic. To us. Yeah. Anytime my passion started to flare, I didn't have to think about it anymore. But just an automatic, bring it back down. Let's get to that flat line. And so that's an example of the under expressing side of my passion kind of showing up.

Jason Frazell: 42:38

I love that. So the book, so what's the book called?

Adam Quiney: 42:41

books called? Who do you think you are? And then the subheading is A Leaders Guide to what the mirror doesn't show you. Yeah.

Jason Frazell: 42:49

So one of the things I love about this book, and I learned about this book from I was at a another place you spoke at last month, or it was even this month, this month, is this book is really useful for coaches, but it's also useful for anybody that's interested in leadership, both to take a look at yourself. And just as importantly, for me, I would want to use this book to take a look at my team and see where their underclocked are overclocked. Yeah, but I do. I'm a Clifton Strengths person, I'm certified in that tool. There's something similar. This is an ontological book, Clifton Strengths has a very similar concept. And if you've studied Clifton Strengths at all, in college, that's the shadow of your shadow of your strength.

Adam Quiney: 43:28

So different than strengths finders that right?

Jason Frazell: 43:31

No Clifton Strengths is don't don't fire me gallop. Clifton Strengths is the rebranding of, of StrengthsFinder, which was one of the all time best selling books. And then they decided, You know what, so many people know the name of this thing that we're going to change it to something different. Don Clifton and Dr. Don Clifton invented it. And so it's actually called Clifton Strengths now, but from a from an objective view, when you get your it's 34 strengths on a list 10 strength and 24 manage. Same thing as we'll call them the blind spot or the shadow of your strengths. And it's the place where and for you, what I hear is you're probably high learner, based on what you're saying, or high input, those things are both. I like to learn things I like to collect things I like to know a lot of things, the shadow of both of those things as you do so much time learning and inputting that you know, we're actually use it anywhere. And so you have these people that are this isn't about you, but people that have these wealth of knowledge, but the wealth of knowledge, they've never applied it to make the world a better place. Right and all that. So really fascinating book. So it's coming out soon, like very soon. Yeah, two weeks, two weeks, where is it available?

Adam Quiney: 44:38

So September 12, is when it launches and the day of the launch, we're doing a promotion. It's Amazon is where people buy it. So the day of the launch, if people buy the book for now, they can buy the book on Kindle only and it's 99 cents. If they do that and connect with me and show me a receipt for that date has to be that date. We'll send them a free paperback copy. have the book. So that's a hot deal. And then after that forevermore, the paperback, the hardcover and the Kindle are all available at a regular price, which will be, you know, September 13. and beyond. Yeah.

Jason Frazell: 45:11

Oh, you didn't hardcover as well? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I

Adam Quiney: 45:14

really like when I designed when I wrote this. It kind of like groove. This started from a really funny project that I'll share in a moment. But as this was coming into existence, I started to realize like, Oh, I think this is a book people like, read most of it. And then they have it on their desk as a reference for like, supporting themselves to read. And so if we're gonna have a book like that, I want something gorgeous. I want some that for me, when I have a reference book, I want something that feels nice. And that looks good on my desk. And so yeah, we designed a beautiful cover. hardcopy make it really feel nice.

Jason Frazell: 45:49

Yeah, well, I'm gonna zoom out and show you this, you're gonna you're gonna be here on my, my desk here, I'm gonna get the book can be added to all my podcast guests. And that's not all the ones that had the book, but I will definitely keep it there both as a coach, but also as a podcaster. Like put any anybody have head on right back there. I'll have you there. Very cool. Yeah, very cool. Adam. How long did it take you to write the book? From concept to where you're? I mean, it's done now. Right? Yeah. Editor public? Yeah. Obviously, hope. So. I hope you're like, you know, Adam, we need some more changes here. The next two weeks. You're like, wait, what?

Adam Quiney: 46:24

Don't post the podcast yet. So there's like multiple answers on one level, like 12 years, right? Like all of this has been building over all of my time, one learning model of ontology and then sort of adapting it building on my on that creating my own. But then the initial idea began, because I was in Portland, getting stoned. I was I had a bit of a bit of a problem with smoking pot back then. And I was just getting baked and looking for stuff to do. And so I started playing with Canva. Canva is a graphic design tool. Yeah. And I was also taking a lot of photos. And I started to have this idea, as I was playing around in Canva, like, oh, it'd be really neat to capture, like a quality of being like connection. And then I'll design like a little graphic for it. So I started with like, connection, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the extraordinary. And I began to make these and I sent them to like a few clients, and one of them told me it was cute, and I was like, I did not like that, okay. And, and that idea of like, kind of capturing some of these qualities in a way that people could recognize, as opposed of just this nebulous word. I was like, that has some legs to it. And so initially, I started to work on that and try to create a bunch of beautiful graphics, then I started to, like, create a very short form, like a quick sheet of about 20 of these and then that started to become a book that I was writing and so from start all the way to finish like beginning with that Portland thing is probably about five years and writing and propers probably been maybe two and a half years.

Jason Frazell: 48:11

Yeah. Now congratulations, I work with a I work with and I know quite a few authors interviewed quite a few here do some brand strategy with them. It's not a small undertaking, no matter what sound book is, it is the the person I had on the podcast today. He's like I said, he's a quite well known fiction writer. It's a labor of love and it's also putting yourself out there in the world big time, or where people are gonna go and I like it. I don't like it, you're gonna want more reviews on Amazon did like all these things that you know, are going to be likely present for you and just, you know, I have such respect for authors because it is, that would be a thing to be out of my comfort zone is writing a book. Not only not only out of my comfort zone, I just don't want to do it. I don't like writing. Sounds miserable. That really cool Adam.

Adam Quiney: 48:57

The saving grace over here is I love writing. Writing a book is a different undertaking than just authorship like writing posts, but I love both. And to what I'm most excited about is I don't really have my eye on like this being a best seller at Barnes and Noble or something. I'm just really excited to send this as a gift to Kochi so that I get in touch with it or like I want to learn more Is there a book and I can be like yeah, there is now because I've been looking for one forever and now I have one I can give you and I think it's really going to serve so that's what I'm most excited about.

Jason Frazell: 49:27

It's also a great tool to get out and get speaking engagements seven points and you'd have in the back of the room and you know author there's never a bad thing to add your title and amazing atoms so I got a I have a few more questions for you.

Adam Quiney: 49:39

Let's hit them.

Jason Frazell: 49:40

Yeah, what's something you're afraid might be true about you

Adam Quiney: 49:48

some easy I'll give you a couple like that. I'm disappointment. And that could be like any number of places like even just I show up on a podcast and people like this gonna be amazing. This guy sounds cool. And then they listen They're like, oh, like I kind of suck. Afraid, often that that I don't actually care about people that I'm very selfish and just don't give anything, don't don't care at all about people. And then I'm, like, insensitive. Like it was kind of a little bit of a elaboration on the last one, but like, just insensitive and and kind of full of myself and not really present to other people.

Jason Frazell: 50:30

For those those to the insensitivity and being afraid that you don't care about people, what do you do to compensate for that?

Adam Quiney: 50:40

You mean, in terms of like, from my essence, or you mean, like reactive, like from when that fear shows up? What's my reactive response?

Jason Frazell: 50:46

Now? So well, one of the things in this podcast, I've asked this question 130, some people people like, Oh, it's this. And then I never tell them and ask them the compensation question. And they're always like, oh, yeah, like people, like, I'm afraid I'm actually lazy. And they're like, Oh, my God, I work myself to the bone. Right? Like, yeah, it's like, well, so this is a good example of what I believe another way to put this in the context of your book is, the thing you're afraid might be true about you or about me or about any of us, is the underclocking of the essence. Yeah. And then the thing that you do to compensate as you turn that dial up on the other side,

Adam Quiney: 51:19

yeah. And in the book, what's really cool, I think, is we call these obvious fixes. And we have these distinguished for a whole bunch of different, you know, here's the fear or the under and overclocking, here are the obvious fixes to them, so to speak, then from like, the obvious fixes, you know, like, what do I kind of reactively do? Yeah, from being insensitive, I, I kind of lose my sovereignty. So whether it's in partnership with my beautiful, lovely wife, or with my friends, or whatever, I kind of lose sight of my entire, like, my feet get washed out from under me. And if my friend is like, you did this, I fall all over myself to like, I'm so sorry. Let me take that on. How do I bla bla bla bla bla. And sometimes there's a place where it's like, no, like, I've apologized to you. But I'm really clear where I was coming from, and it wasn't, whatever, you're making it up to me. And this is the, so I lose that, that I lose my own sovereignty. To work through that insensitivity. I've been that's I've been doing a lot of work on that. In my marriage, that's been a theme that we've been working on. And of course, that's because Bay, my wife has also been doing a lot of her own work. And so yeah, the beautiful thing about romantic, committed relationship is our work. My work sources her and then she's got something new, and then that sources, my work and so on and so forth.

Jason Frazell: 52:40

Yeah. And also can be I'm guessing infuriating at the same time, sometimes Oh, yeah.

Adam Quiney: 52:45

So hard, you know, like art, being kind of like that reactive self is like overly sensitive, right? overly concerned over there. It's a little codependent, really. But like, I was raised to, like, really care about other people. And so to like that the work for me sometimes is to almost do what occurs to me as being selfish in the face of a fear that I'm selfish, right? It's kind of like, it's counterintuitive. A lot of that's why the obvious fix doesn't work. And it's usually something else. And yeah, so it is, it's really infuriating at times, challenging.

Jason Frazell: 53:19

Yeah. Well, thank you, Adam. I can't wait to read the book. I'm going to really encourage anybody who is a leader, as a coach, really, anybody who's interested in this topic whatsoever I can. This concept and this topic to me, can be applied in every single area of your life as a parent, how do you underclock or overclock as a parent? How are you? How do you do this in your marriage and romantic for those who play sports or musicians like there's always this idea of overclocking or underclocking things and what I hear is the output of this is like how do you actually just get to have the darn most fun in your life and have the most ease and the place is that sweet spot in the middle that you that are catching up? And I think I've gotten to a point where a lot of my life feels that way. I know that you've done a lot of work to get there to a lot of work but a lot of not work at the same time. Just like be yourself. You're like yeah, be be myself. And I don't need to overclock overclock. So, Adam, how do you see the world

Adam Quiney: 54:20

fundamentally good and fundamentally innocent. That doesn't mean that people aren't doing bad things. And it doesn't mean that people aren't dirtbags. It just means that fundamentally, I believe people have a beautiful essence and when they show up in ways that we relate to or judges bad, evil, whatever what's really happening is they're scared and from our fear causes all the harm that we caused because we become selfish. We become caught in ourselves and we're not able to empathize because we're worried about our own self annihilation, and so fundamentally good fundamentally innocent.

Jason Frazell: 54:57

Yeah, I like the polite Canadian dirtbag. Well, Dude, that's not how he would say that here in New York. You're like, you're such a jerk bag. Like that's a good one I like I'm gonna start using that. All right, Adam, how can everybody listening connect with you? What's the best way to find you find out more about the book, obviously, just who you are, what you're up to in the world and all that. We haven't even talked about all the other stuff I know you're up to but how can people connect with you if they want to want to do so?

Adam Quiney: 55:23

Yep. So obviously, the social medias are easy. Facebook, I'm on their LinkedIn, I'm on there. There's only one other Adam coin in the world. And he's not me. So just follow me. That's pretty easy. Very, very fortunate. Yeah. And my website, I put a lot of my art there. So that's just Adam coiny.com. And I beat that other guy out. And the other place, I would suggest people go if they want to kind of engage more in the leadership conversation that I am passionate about is my podcast. So if they search, Adam Coiny get lit, the podcast name will change. But don't worry about that for now. Or you can go to my website, and there's a link there to it. And I say generally about 20 minute format, where I talk about some kind of distinction and leadership. So those are the best ways to connect

Jason Frazell: 56:10

us. Alright, Adam, last thing for us. Thank you. Well, before that, thank you again, labor love with the book, I cannot wait to read it, it's gonna make a difference for so many people. Last thing, Adam leave us with some short and sweet words of wisdom.

Adam Quiney: 56:28

Put me right on the spot short and sweet. I'm more like a long and bitter kind of person. But I would probably say, one. If you have not yet had the gift of an experience working with a coach, I highly recommend it. It makes my life immeasurably better. And I really think it supports everyone. And to just practice considering that the world is fundamentally good and fundamentally innocent. And then trace whatever is annoying you back to that place if you can, and it'll make your life better. And because you'll start to see people with more compassion, and that'll allow you to see yourself with more compassion.

Jason Frazell: 57:03

I love that. That's a perfect way to wrap today. Adam, thank you so much for being on. Keep up the good work. Hope you don't have to work with too many dirtbags today or the next week, and can't wait to read the book. And we'll have you back on again sometime probably next season to talk about how it's been going.

Adam Quiney: 57:19

Looking forward to it. Thanks. Thanks,

Jason Frazell: 57:21

Adam. Thanks.

Unknown: 57:23

Thanks for listening to another episode of talking to cool people with Jason for Zell. If you enjoyed today's episode, please tell your friends. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook and give us a shout out or take a moment to leave a review on iTunes. If something from today's episode pique your interest and you'd like to connect, email us at podcast at Jason for zelle.com. We love hearing from our listeners because you're cool people too.