Honestly Unorthodox

Jelly Roll Helped Me Find God.

The day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, his doting wife appeared statuesque behind the Turning Point USA Podium, to a live audience, preaching the goodness of God. On the podium were the words, “May Charlie be received into the merciful arms of Jesus, our loving Savior.” With a quivering voice, she made repeated mentions of Charlie now being “home.” My eyes rolled to the back of my head. This seemingly-performative allegiance to Him, the sort of pageantry only natural to the ice-eyed, platinum blonde Erikas of the world, was precisely the reason I’d considered myself agnostic for so long. Admittedly, my reactions have been similar upon any mention of faith during times of strife. Clearly, my understanding of spirituality fell in line with country-artist Jelly Roll’s notion of a “Prison Christian”: adopting faith was only a means to gain privileges, a simple means to an end. They did not want God, but just want God could do for them. God only served me when I got what I wanted, and it’s embarrassing to share so openly this child-like insight. Thanks for reading Honestly Unorthodox! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. When I first heard Jelly Roll’s chart-topping single, “Need A Favor”, the rhythm was not what struck me. The lyrics took a fresh highlighter to my hypocritical beliefs about how we form opinions and live out our value systems: “I only talk to God when I need a favorAnd I only pray when I ain’t got a prayerSo, who the hell am I, who the hell am ITo expect a Savior?” I’d nurtured my own resentment toward God for many years, commanding Him to reveal Himself, without hoisting the mirror in my direction: where was I? I had zero evidence for expecting anything from a Lord I’d cursed over and over again without a lick of remorse. Had I used my fixation on crucial conversations, lively debate, and unabashed self-reflection as deterrents, as distractions for all the other shitty parts of myself I refused to see? Indignant, I’d decided, “Nope, God is just not worth the effort, He hasn’t done much for me anyway.” My shtick has long been that of resilience as the human default, and touting a sort of “anti-trauma-informed” approach to my work and my personal endeavors: do not assume trauma, assume transformation. Assume that any hardship will blossom into what is now referred to as “Post-Traumatic Growth”, which occurs at higher rates than Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Hold yourself and others to increasingly high standards and be amazed at how most will rise to the occasion. I’ve yet to hear Erika Kirk speak of any post-traumatic stress, nearly a year later, despite widespread attention and even celebration brought to her husband being fatally shot in the neck. Stockpiles of demented people, mocking such brutality with their stupid fucking crumpled signs and giggles--- and Erika repelled. Those who made reality TV of her true love’s murder would eventually meet their maker, for better or for worse, and Erika would take no part in their hatred. What was I missing about her belief in God? Why could she appear so assured while I sat bitter and dismayed, cursing his name in times of challenge? How can she lose her husband and still croon scripture? It wouldn’t be just then, but I’d reevaluate my understanding of Jesus’ message. All while dispensing my share of “Goddamnits” throughout the day, I’d embodied a person I claimed to despise. A person who sought refuge in Him only when I’d been rattled and wanted comfort. Only when I’d demanded unearned support for stress I’d brought entirely on myself. I’d reached out for trivial reasons, like aching for a promotion or that my battered car would make it another trip, or that we could survive one more Midwestern summer with a 30-year-old A/C unit. I only talked to God when I needed a favor. This recognition did not immediately shift my stance on religion. It took time and exposure to conversations with religious people (namely my mother-in-law, a devout Jehovah’s Witness), listening to guided Scripture, and eventually watching The Passion of the Christ. The scene of Jesus’ crucifixion, no matter how cliché that may be, is what forced my hand to open the Bible. Battered, bloodied, his skin peeling off in tattered sheaths of crimson, raised brutally upon the cross to the cackling faces of the Romans, Jesus’ voice rang out: “Forgive them, Father!” This broke a dam in my spirit. All this time and for reasons He’d yet to reveal, I willfully misunderstood the Bible’s ancient wisdoms. To degrees far distanced from what Jesus sacrificed for us, we can understand the wallop that is social disapproval and humiliation. Having lived through my own experience of being “cancelled”, and having learned from the tragic death of my twin brother, I found I’d had more in common with the Bible’s teachings than I’d thought. Perhaps He had revealed himself during these tests, and I’d balked at His efforts. One of the clearest threads between my personal value system and Jesus’ teachings is the responsibility toward others: to treat people how you’d like to be treated, and to extend a hand to those damaged, broken, addicted, and afflicted. The patience we provide to others dwarfs the very-human obsession with social standing, outward image, and even rigid rule-following. I hold true to treating people with respect, even those who made voracious efforts to destroy my livelihood. The most difficult message for me to swallow was how heavily hypocrisy was criticized in the Bible, as my own was showcased through my cries for favors from Him for no good reason other than ego. “Of course You do this to me,” I’d mutter, “You don’t give a shit anyway”; “What sort of God allows torturing of animals and psychotic people to walk freely?” This criticism aligns with Jesus’ insistence that we remain honest in our behavior and in our words, that our beliefs must match what we do should our goal be cohesion with others. My goal has always been that of honesty regarding my beliefs, and such honesty is more important to me than the style in which I fashion it online. The core principle of the Bible which resonates with me most is meaning-making through suffering. He does not pretend life is simple nor smooth, and does not mislead His followers into such surface-level understanding of what it means to be human. Rather, the Bible grants us opportunity for growth through repeated tests of what we can handle. The Scripture I think I hold closest is James 1:3: “God says, ‘My timing may test your patience, but My plan will never fail you.’” When my twin brother Conner died and I hovered over his lifeless body at the crematorium, I expected to feel some sort of… sensation. Some sort of experience of his squelched spirit dissipating, his life now floating upward toward the Heavens, leaving his twin sister aglow with the serenity he so often quoted in the Alcoholics Anonymous prayer. I’d practically scripted a transformation I felt I was owed. I felt angry for years following Conner’s cremation, his official goodbye, wondering why God would choose to retreat in a time I desperately searched for him. He was permitted to vanish with my brother while I was left here. He left me void of closure, to which I assumed He mocked my hope. I’d felt nothing, no hint of soul or impression that God was standing beside me. Or so I thought. Maybe God didn’t strand me at all, but I had withdrawn from Him. I see now I likely wasn’t scouring my psyche for evidence of Him for the sake of forgiveness or guidance. I’d waited, cynical and smug, for Him to prove Himself to me. It was me, though, who initiated each flight from Him. Me. I was the problem. Admittedly, I’m not sure I “feel God inside of me” just yet. I’m new to absorbing Jesus’ teachings, and I’m reorienting my many viewpoints to one through the lens of the Bible. I’m learning that the greatest proof of our faith lies in the adversity which convinces us we’re cursed, or that God has chosen some other fortunate bastard to collect His good graces. I don’t know if I’ve found God yet. But for the first time… I’m not only calling Him when I need a favor. Thanks for reading Honestly Unorthodox! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit honestlyunorthodox.substack.com [https://honestlyunorthodox.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Your Kids Aren’t the Ones Buying Poptarts.

“Lard ass” was the most crowd-pleasing term for overweight children in the 90’s. Genetics blessed my brother and I with lean-yet-muscular physiques with little effort, though we inherited my Dad’s affinity for sports from early on. We were never targeted as lard-asses, and I also don’t remember us calling others “lard-ass” unless they were our closest friends. Adults passively shushed those of us slinging the sneer before moving back into the day’s lesson: preparing us for the mile-run fitness test. The test, which now only about 25% of the adult American population can complete without stopping, was the ultimate social gauntlet for chubbier minors. Ha! Look at lard-ass run! Kids are cruel. Thanks for reading Honestly Unorthodox! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. As a kid, there were only a handful of classmates that were considered overweight. It’s why terms geared toward their appearance were the “ultimate diss”: so few kids fell under the category that even being “big-boned” made one a target for abuse. One of the few overweight kids came from an entire family of morbidly obese individuals. In retrospect, it was clearly environmental-and-lifestyle-based choices which resulted in an entire family to balloon to weights we now know contribute heavily to all-cause mortality. Genetics certainly play a role, and should be weighted heavily in forming opinions about the causes of childhood/adult obesity. But genetics alone do not account for a family of 4, 5, or 6+ people all being obese. It’s this very reason why allowing children to become overweight and obese should be considered a form of parental neglect. The strongest version of this argument leans on responsibility and preventable harm. 1. Knowing the Harms But Choosing Harm Regardless The nutrition information widely shared is, in short, confusing. On one hand, there are high-influence, public-facing individuals claiming not to touch receipts because of toxins infused in the threads, along with stamping everyday carbohydrates as “poisonous.” Others claim carbohydrates are crucial to increasing little athlete’s strength and aerobic capacity. Is protein the silver bullet we’ve made to believe it is? What about fiber? Despite nutritional information becoming a hot commodity from a marketing perspective, eating “well” is largely common sense. A serving of meat, a serving of vegetables, a serving of home-made carbohydrates with limited sugar is all it takes to promote health in adults and children. Nutrition was easy enough that, up until the late 1970’s, only a small portion of the population was overweight—- let alone obese. Childhood obesity is dangerous. It is associated with early onset of serious, often deadly diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Obesity is also closely related to sleep problems, orthopedic issues (i.e., it’s very hard on the joints), and social/psychological consequences. From this perspective, knowingly feeding children to the point of excess should be criticized in the same manner as a neglectful parent who exposes their children to the unnecessary danger of, say, riding in a car without a seatbelt, or second-hand smoke exposure. Perhaps it’s the “slow poison” of obesity that keeps families from seeing it as an acute brand of risk. The information is not what’s missing here. Claim confusion, claim societal constraints. There’s a clear pattern of choice as it relates to well-known, well-documented-and-studied risk. 2. Kids Aren’t the Ones Buying Cheetos The concept of “kids’ menus” is a marketing scheme. There is zero reason why children should be given an entirely separate meal from what their parents or the rest of the family is eating. Because children don’t control their home food environment, and they’re clearly not responsible for preparing meals and purchasing crap-laden junk, the only culpable party is the parent. I love junk food. If it didn’t make my ass fat and render my thighs into cottage-cheese-like-corn-dogs, I’d eat it every single day. But I’m a responsible adult who understands the risks, much like the parents of young children who are chronically allowing consumption of ultra-processed, calorie-dense, sugar-rich “foods”, all while modeling highly sedentary lifestyles. This pattern of unmet needs, that is, structure, boundaries, and basic health-promoting routines, is entirely within a family’s control---- it does not matter who is president, how inflation has affected grocery bills, or what RFK Jr. suggests as the food pyramid. For parents of young children, I’d wonder what your response might be to your child eating Marshmallow Fluff with a side of Mountain Dew for breakfast each morning. I’d imagine (or I’d hope) that the response might fall under disgust, even exasperation. If these feelings do arise--- what is your next action? If children do not control what’s available, why do we expect them to control the outcome of their weight? If the inputs are adult-controlled... So is the result. 3. Early Habits Track This speaks to my above point in that, despite some genetic lulls, children who grow up without early exposure to movement, exercise, portion awareness, and basic nutrition are statistically more likely to carry these poor patterns into adulthood. They can easily fall into the camp of adults who claim to “get back on track after their baby goes to kindergarten”, or “once I get promoted I’ll have more time to focus on my health,” or whatever other excuse remains to bolster our esteem. Failing to intervene early is on-par with a child who regularly misses school, whose teeth are rotting because of untreated dental issues, or who wears soiled clothing multiple days in a row. Framed this way, you’d think families may be more inclined to get their act together? Your child will not magically “grow out” of the habits you instilled. So it’s in the family’s best interest to choose the good ones. 4. Obesity Is Expensive and is Eating Your Tax Dollars Obesity is a colossal economic force entirely unrelated to “beauty standards”, social media, and psychological impact. Sure, much of what drives childhood and adolescent behavior now can be attributed to some forces beyond what parents control. There are clear issues like public school lunches which make controlled portions and healthy eating that much more difficult to manage once children leave their home. But these obstacles do not eliminate the responsibility of us taxpayers: they magnify a caregivers’ role. I’d wonder if we disincentivized shitty eating through monetary measures (i.e., our paychecks), we’d see a change in poor health behavior? Obesity costs the U.S. healthcare system about $173 billion per year in direct medical spending. Some estimates push that even higher: up to $200+ billion annually depending on how it’s calculated. This is not an estimate of money from billionaire sources, either; a significant portion of these costs are being pulled from your paycheck through public programs. Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and certain cancers are expensive, very lucrative conditions. Not only do they require chronic, repeated doctor visits and hospitalizations, many patients undergo surgeries and consume multiple, lifelong medications to “manage” the symptoms. It’s because of these factors that our healthcare premiums bloat. Higher healthcare spending on obesity-related conditions results in higher employer healthcare and likely-lower wages (in an effort to offset these costs). In terms of workplace behavior and revenue-generation, reduced productivity, disability payouts, and chronic absenteeism are all directly tied to one’s poor health. It all adds up in the form of hard-earned taxpayer dollars. Money funneled into simply managing very preventable disease, instead of funding truly useful (but not profitable, unfortunately) programs like preventative education and healthcare, is the resource allocation problem of America. The private problem of family values is now everyone’s problem, a problem with clear public consequences. I’m an anorexic 15 years in recovery. I wholly acknowledge that a hyper-focus on children’s weight and eating habits, or embodying the “Almond Mom” meme, carries its own risks. Eating disorders are the most lethal of mental disorders. With this in mind, though, the “kids eat what adults eat” argument is less about the outcome (i.e., the child’s actual body and aesthetics) and more about the inputs---- the inputs that adults control (what is cooked, what is allowed, what boundaries are in place in the home). If a child’s environment consistently lacks structure around food, movement and exercise, sleep, and basic behavioral limits… is this not neglectful? Would we not call it neglect in any other domain? Why does childhood health, in particular, get a hall pass? Children cannot reasonably change their own environment and certainly know fuck-all about what is best for “future them”, despite what modern child psychology claims. We grossly underestimate their physical abilities all while burdening them with overestimations of their psychological capacity. They cannot, should not, and do not ever set their environment. Adults do. Call it whatever you want; neglect, laziness, gentle parenting. But when a child lives in a preventable pattern of impairment they didn’t choose, the label isn’t the problem. Thanks for reading Honestly Unorthodox! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit honestlyunorthodox.substack.com [https://honestlyunorthodox.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

A Physiology-First Workplace

This will be a 2-part piece which lays out the 2 pillars of a better workplace: physiology as the foundation of behavior and functioning (this piece), and adjusting the “system” so that behavior follows actual, predictable feedback loops… similar to dog training (Gasp!)--- this is the next piece. In Cheyenne’s right hand is a 32-ounce Dunkin’ Donuts cup adorned with a bitten-in-several-places straw. It sweats from the outside, leaving droplets onto the table directly beside her MacBook Air. With each wrist flick, Cheyenne swirls caramel-coated-Oreo-shrapnel through a hurricane of heavily-syruped, watered-down iced coffee. “Ugh, I’m like so anxious this morning,” she says to nobody in particular. Thanks for reading Honestly Unorthodox! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Nobody responds by suggesting, “You don’t think that mocha-drizzle-Oreo-orgy Caramelicious drink has anything to do with that?” The modern workplace is more than an adult daycare. It is a sociological experiment in how extremely poor diet and lifestyle habits, paired with chronically unclear expectations and indirect, avoidant communication, impact our ability to derive meaning from our day to day lives. Even more eerie? We think this is normal. We believe our Paxil prescriptions are benign conversation starters, about as banal as, apparently, our psychiatric diagnoses and the irregularity of our bowel movements. These bodily changes, which directly affect our cognitive functioning without our recognition, become lazy arguments for the 4-day work-week, remote work, and increased “mental health days.” But what if these issues aren’t motivation problems at all? What if it has less to do with the supposed “burnout epidemic” or our nation’s mental health crisis… but is actually just a training failure? A large portion of what we call anxiety, burnout, and dysfunction is not just caused by “the system”. It’s amplified by poor physiological health, weak habits, and a lack of training in core behavioral skills (I name them below). Burnout, simply stated, is a state of mind more often than the product of a poorly run-and-managed workplace. This is not a denial of very clear workplace changes and modern problems: I’m wholly aware that we’re forced to treat our phones like additional limbs, that we’re ensnared with political rage-bait until we go to sleep via Slack notifications and passive-aggressive gentle reminders, and that we can, at any moment, watch someone set themselves on fire on YouTube with little more than a “holy shit” on our part. What have we done? Constraints and stressors of modern life are legitimate. I actually do think the world being far more psychologically demanding contributes to increasing rates of mental illness. But we are also over-attributing dysfunction to these external systems while under-examining our own capacity to manage them. It’s a simple problem of disproportion! We can acknowledge that, yes, life is more difficult now (in some ways) than it ever has been, specifically from a financial and emotional standpoint--- but it remains our responsibility to figure out how to contend with these ever-increasing challenges. The government is not your friend or your savior. If modern environments integrated physiology and behavior science into their operating systems, we’d see far less “burn out”, job-hopping, and workplace dissatisfaction. Instead, we ignore the human brain, we willfully dismiss the role of health in our behavior, and we wedge our thumb into our ass while pathologizing very predictable outcomes of this ignorance. We’re undertrained intellectually and physically! When I say “undertrained” throughout this piece, I’m pointing directly to the following core behavioral deficits: 1) Distress tolerance 2) Sustained attention 3) Task initiation without reminders or even “motivation” 4) Recovery and repair after failure/mistakes 5) Ability to receive feedback without escalation 6) Ability to deliver clear, respectful feedback 7) Using clear, direct communication with others 8) Following-through on low-reward tasks While some of these skills come easier to others for reasons largely genetic/temperament-based (i.e., personality traits), the majority are entirely learned. This is good news! It means that, despite a steep learning curve for many of these core skills (we’re not born good communicators or pre-packaged to accept feedback), they’re trainable behaviors. They’re cemented in our day-to-day functioning through repetition and through systems which allow these skills to multiply and mature over time. So here’s the workplace I propose, one which rests on two pillars: 1. Physiology as the foundation of behavior and functioning 2. Behavior following actual contingencies (i.e., feedback loops” instead of “intentions” and “impacts” and emotional slop) You cannot think clearly after drinking 32 ounces of refined sugars across the course of 3 hours sitting, slouched over a computer, pushing mindless emails back and forth. And you also cannot expect consistent, desirable behavior of people around you in a system which is highly inconsistent in how it manages human behavior. The Physiology-First Workplace Sedentary but also cognitively demanding environments make for a “nervous system” toggling between two states: extreme under-arousal and overstimulation. Now, I used to scoff at terms like “nervous system” and “overstimulation” in the context of humans, namely children, because they were so overly used in justifying obscene, disgusting, and unacceptable behavior. As it relates to adults, though, these terms hit the mark. On even a primitive level, our brains need a certain degree of arousal/challenge to stay engaged. This is best illustrated through the Yerkes-Dodson Law, which states, in plain language, that too much challenge makes us shut down, but so does too little challenge. Being told to complete monotonous tasks far below our ability level, for example, is what can result in that feeling of “checking out.” It’s boring, and appears completely unrelated to what we will use in everyday life!!! Being told to complete a series of trigonometry equations for math-idiots like me, though? Also leads to checking out. Your workplace usually keeps you in a low-alertness state at the very beginning of the day and throughout the day, with only spurts of stimulation; these spurts often come in the form of aggravation or some other annoyance. Slouching over your computer to type your 17th email, or submit the 9th revision on a meaningless report? Your brain activity is low, which means your functioning stays “offline”, which looks like procrastination, mental fog, and poor ability to focus. Sound familiar? That was my entire last job! And my boss wondered why, with that dopey look of smug bewilderment on her face, “I wasn’t meeting expectations.” We cannot demand focus, patience, and emotional control in environments like these. And mental health “awareness” days, or sending emails about the importance of “wellness walks”, are not going to increase cognitive preparation. This is why I propose the mandatory mile. The mandatory daily mile (a walk or a run) should be considered a non-negotiable form of preparation for the day ahead versus an adorably-optional brand of self-care. Framed this way, exercise can be adopted as a daily practice crucial to everyday performance, a pre-requisite to all the outcomes upper-management wish to see. Sure, injury and disability would require modified participation. But the mandatory mile is less about the mile or even about improving one’s fitness, and more about participation. Completion becomes the new expectation. The Daily Shift Proposal 1. The First Hour: The Mandatory Mile a. Zero tasks, emails, or demands before completion of the mile b. Purpose: to simply shift arousal and “turn your brain on” c. Naperville North High School implemented “The Zero Hour” PE class for their students, and saw remarkable results in their reported energy levels, their mental acuity, and, yes--- their grades! See details here:https://physednhealth.com/zero-hour-pe/ [https://physednhealth.com/zero-hour-pe/] 2. Shorter Work Blocks: 60-90 Minutes, Then Move a. Not “if you have time” or “if you need to stretch your legs”---treat this as a required aspect of the work block b. Designed to sustain blood flow and attention versus constantly recover from emotional/intellectual collapsing behind your computer screen 3. Reduced Expectation of Urgency & Constant Responsiveness a. This is more the workplace behavioral layer, which we’ll discuss in part two, but it’s crucial for our “nervous system” to remain adaptive b. Unless you’re an ER nurse or paramedic, there is literally zero reason anything you do on a daily basis at work needs to be an emergency c. Other peoples’ neuroticism is 100% not your emergency 4. Walking Meetings a. Getting moving and walking parallel can actually reduce some of the nerves people may feel about sharing their truest feelings. b. This is a slippery slope, as it’s crucial we teach people to face their fears by taking action… however, the increased attention to physiological performance may be the kickstart people need to say what’s on their mind, free of disclaimers! The Physiology-First Workplace is not about “optimizing performance” and tracking metrics only relevant to elite athletes. As mentioned, it has very little to do with working our way to the top of a physical performance leaderboard. Its emphasis lies in the mismatch between cognitively and emotionally demanding work completion in people with bodily functions barely prepared and trained. We begin the day sugared and sedentary and remain sedentary, puzzled as to the outcome: poor performance reviews, increased errors, why nobody has the energy or will to speak face to face to one another. The Physiology-First workplace rejects the framing which sees very predictable outcomes like above as mysterious conditions. It treats health as the starting point, versus a luxurious act of “self-love” or “self-care” only afforded to those with flexible schedules. The framework refuses to separate the body and the mind. Sound extreme? That’s only because we’ve “normalized” utter dysfunction as “how things are.” Thanks for reading Honestly Unorthodox! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit honestlyunorthodox.substack.com [https://honestlyunorthodox.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

The United States of You: Leading Yourself in a Company That Has No Standards or Common Sense

I once worked with a teenager who had to be padlocked in her own home from the inside. A highly aggressive kid with a knack for sprinting out of her own home to charge into the garages, locked doors, and windows of others’ houses, she was both a liability and a threat to her family and society. The police had been called on several occasions because of her relentlessly pounding on strangers’ doors, demanding she be let into the home to pocket something she saw through their living room window. Her parents’ response? “She just wants to look at it!” Thanks for reading Operation: Replace My Salary! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. When she charged at a 2-year-old at a playground to steal a toy cradled in the child’s hands, her parents’ response? Negotiating with the baby’s parents to convince them she should be allowed to hold the toy “for just 10 minutes.” My emotional reckoning came after I physically had to wrestle and restrain her from breaking the glass doors of a public school. After deciding she was owed the right to enter any public or private place that wasn’t hers, she proceeded to punch, bite, scratch, charge at, and tackle the one person who was willing to tell her “No” (i.e., me). And her behavior, this violent and entirely unacceptable behavior, disability or no disability, mental illness or no mental illness, wasn’t even the most tragic detail in this story. In a follow-up debrief regarding our WWE match, I reminded her parents that behaving this way was entirely unacceptable. And yes, that needed to be said, which itself is such a travesty I can hardly stand it. I urged them to tell their daughter her behavior was unacceptable. Their response? “I don’t like that wording. She doesn’t do well with charged language. Can we replace it with, like, something more positive?” Worse yet, my boss’ response, directly in front of the family? “Kayla, I would never say that to my kid This is the modern work world. Imagine being tasked with helping people and bearing the burden of “meaningful outcomes” when you’re forced to work with people, and under people, this delusional. While it may seem impossible, I do have some tricks up my sleeve. These would ideally come from administration or upper management, but, let’s be honest: your manager likely lacks common sense and people skills and is generally incompetent at understanding people. With this in mind, you can choose to lead yourself, and allow your environment to rise to your level of audacity. Obvious Things We’re Pretending Are Complicated 1. Say the thing everyone is avoiding. This is not hard. a. What people do: Meet about the same problem and then complain that the problem isn’t changing. Offer up “solutions” that require no real work or outcomes beyond continuously meeting to “unpack” the problem. b. What to do instead: Describe what’s happening in observable terms, free of adorable semantics, and force your team to contact reality. 2. Replace all opinions, “processing”, “unpacking meetings”, and performative empathy with evidence. a. What people do: Meet and admire problems endlessly. My old boss made morality theater of designing 20+ page plans and doing nothing with them, other than editing them repeatedly to keep herself busy and feeling important. b. What to do instead: Bring simple data to showcase the consequences of talking-without-action. How many meetings happened without decisions? How many times have we met that led to meaningful, observable change? How many deadlines were missed? How much revenue was lost because of unclear expectations? 3. Stop over-explaining, “unpacking”, and “processing” and set the goddamn contingency. a. What people do: Explain, meet to re-explain, follow-up with an email to explain why you’re re-explaining, and then soften the process to spare Darla’s hurt feelings. b. What to do instead: Tie behavior to outcomes. Met your goal? Awesome. When people do what they’re supposed to do, YOU MUST NOTICE IT AND SET FORTH UNREASONABLE HOSPITALITY AND AFFIRMATION FOR THEM BEING AWESOME. Didn’t meet the goal? Consequence. And I don’t mean a verbal warning or threat- a true consequence. 4. Reward what ACTUALLY MATTERS. a. What people do: Work is an adult daycare rife with neurotic personality contests. Leaders, especially women, love to praise effort and participation from staff they already like, versus setting their sights on outcomes worth monitoring. b. What to do instead: Reward follow-through, reliability, clarity, and consistency. Shape actual behavior instead of morale theater. Do not shower brown-nosers and busy bodies with your attention simply because they spent excessive time doing something that doesn’t actually result in anything important. 5. Reduce unnecessary friction… not standards. a. What people do: Lower expectations when people struggle to soften the blows of reality. “Maybe we need to show her a little more empathy,” is what I’ve heard leadership say. As if empathy cannot possibly exist in the same vein as expectations. b. What to do instead: The expected behavior must be easier versus optional. Simplify the system, reduce the bullshit performative steps, and stop making people jump through hoops to get something done. This usually means leaders have to stop the micromanaging, which is an entirely separate problem for another piece. Systems who actively avoid reality will always find this sort of very basic, direct, professional behavior offensive. But the key to growth in any business is to grow or die, and risk-takers/innovators must be rewarded in these environments, even if they fall short. I understand the fear in sharing unfiltered thoughts or so much as relaying what was once known as common sense in the modern workplace. Bosses are hyper-insecure because they’re hyper-incompetent, which shows itself as micromanaging and retaliation for broads like me. It’s still worth it to set a standard of critical thought and diversity of opinion. Anywhere you work, whether self-employed or employed by a narrow-minded shrew, you will be faced with varying degrees of insufferable human behavior. It’s ultimately up to you to decide how you will tolerate it, advocate for your own needs, and lead yourself. You are the United States of You. Start acting like it! Thanks for reading Operation: Replace My Salary! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit honestlyunorthodox.substack.com [https://honestlyunorthodox.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

I Was Offered An Autism Clinic That Was a Guaranteed Cash Cow

I shared recently that I was canned from a school consulting gig that I actually very much enjoyed. As the Big Man Above would have it, I’ve since received nearly 10 different offers for work doing the exact same thing. This is one of the upsides of working in healthcare, I suppose: with America’s mental and physical health deteriorating at the rates it has, you can essentially get fired on Monday morning and secure another job come dinner. One of the options pitched was an objectively legitimate one. In looking solely at the financials, like profit & loss statements and profit margins, the business was a cash cow. I’ve long since imagined there being a metaphorical vehicle to the life I ultimately want to live: living and playing on 5 acres of land in Tennessee with my husband, with an animal rescue for abandoned and abused cats, dogs, horses, and goats. Cash flow would have been nearly guaranteed from day one, all without my having to conduct much of any clinical work. This opportunity was the convenient Delorean, jet-setting to future-Kayla. Thanks for reading Operation: Replace My Salary! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. My default reaction to getting fired was, “Well, I guess I need to find a way to make my own money again!” I’m a project and fractional work sort of gal in the sense that I thrive on start-up sweat equity and short stints with strict expiration dates. I do not like being hired for indefinite time periods (i.e., like any and all therapy sort of work) in which the end of services is unclear (are we done in 5 months? 5 years? Ever?) Knowing this about myself, owning and operating full-blown businesses is not in the cards for me. This seemed like any regular season in my life, to start a random business, because I’ve done it so many times before. I decided to launch a home-service based business for seniors that offers DoorDash-like help for flat rates: tech set-up, garage clear-outs, laundry pick-up and drop-off, etc. Within that same week of My Grand Firing, the offers I received (all related to my degrees) were paying no less than $80 an hour. Opportunity, as it seems, shows up after action… not before. The autism clinic opportunity, on paper, was airtight. Hardly a breezy 20 minutes from home, the clinic didn’t even have drywall up yet, and was ripe for a woman’s interior touch. I was introduced to construction workers on-site who immediately asked for my vision of the layout. Because I can’t share many details about it and don’t wish to make any statements about the investors, what I’ll say is this: it was a dream, no-brainer opportunity for many die-hard applied behavior analysts I know in the autism world. Autism clinics (or ABA clinics) are cash cows. Healthcare is a cash cow industry as it is, but ABA, in particular, shits money. Not only is there high demand (1 in 31 kids have an autism diagnosis, and all pediatricians recommend ABA as the frontline treatment), the revenue is highly predictable, recurrent, and long-lasting. Services on average begin at age 2 and do not stop, at least for most families, until the child “ages out” at age 22. That’s two decades of guaranteed money. Some ABA companies have even instituted policies around 15 hours per week being the minimum commitment required for treatment. For the owner of the autism business, the passive revenue secured from the technicians running the daily, hours-long sessions is colossal. Sessions typically run from a minimum of 2 hours upwards of 5-6 hours---for one child. We can’t share insurance rates publicly, but I’ll paint a picture like so: technicians bill anywhere from 20 hours a week on the low end to 40 hours a week on the high end. Technicians are the ABA version of a physicians assistant or nurse. Further, Medicaid rates, which are public, pay anywhere from $60-$80 an hour for a technician-run-billable-hour; technicians only need a high school diploma to “practice”. The business owner, then, can sneak away paying techs near-minimum-wage and pocket the remaining, say, $40-$60 per hour from their couch or from a cabana in Tulum. Rational brain said, “Kayla, are you stupid? You’ve been wanting out of the field for years. This is your ticket. This is your literal voucher to that farm life you’ve been envisioning for so long.” The business meets the criteria for everything new business owners and serial entrepreneurs want: recurrent revenue, predictable revenue, highly scalable operations. So I said hell fucking no. I already know the healthcare, insurance-billing path that so many of us hold in the same respect as taxes, as inflation, as meetings that could have been emails. Billable hour systems across all of healthcare reward revenue and profit margin growth, rather than treatment which is creative, innovative, or even beneficial. Cures and preventative measures do not make money, and competence fails to result in increased revenue. Your credential, your pulse, and your Medicaid billing ID will do just fine. A good opportunity does not guarantee a good outcome, let alone a good life. Something highly profitable means next to nothing if the work itself sucks you dry. I’ve wrangled with this a lot; Do we follow our passions? I think that’s definitely stupid. But I also wonder if going to work solely to make money is equally misguided. Competence paired with mastery of a skill usually develop into passion later on; Would I ever grow passionate about, say, accounting and number figures had my parents forced me to become a CPA? There’s no way of knowing. These days, I only choose to be exceptional in how I treat people and in domains that actually interest me. I took a Working Genius Assessment that analyzes what my strengths and frustrations are as it relates to work, and found that most jobs I’ve had are built entirely around my frustrations (compliance, procedural execution, documentation… and having to support, motivate, and push people to do things they said they’d do.) If this is of interest to people, I’m happy to share the full report. Right now I’ve gotten lots of asks about lots of different things. I love all of them: 1. Developing AI integration for financials for a business who is struggling to remain profitable 2. Meal prep service for moms of big families who struggle to come up with meal ideas 3. Continuing CEU development for BCBAs 4. Paid writing gigs (ghostwriting, helping to develop copy for flyers and websites) Clarity and certainty are not coming to save you. They’re things you create, one test at a time. None of us can optimize for happiness or even fulfillment, so maybe looking at our lives as experiments amenable to some tampering is the better way to go. So let’s help each other: no more ideas. Just action. One test is all it takes. Thanks for reading Operation: Replace My Salary! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit honestlyunorthodox.substack.com [https://honestlyunorthodox.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]