Read The Transcript

​Transcript
Are you ready? Are you ready for the day? Are you ready for the #piratebroadcast? If you're not you need to get a hold of some coffee.
So we could talk to Lee Everette. Today Lee is an individual that I've actually met Lee in person at one of the few people on the #piratebroadcast that I met in person and we have some common interests in coffee. I like coffee Lee likes coffee. We also want to talk a little bit about mental health and maybe some maybe if we get into it we have time we'll talk about some,
workplace development optimizing some of the things you could do in your workplace. So stay tuned and let's introduce the #piratebroadcast and all you pirates out there to Lee Everette. How are you doing Lee?

Hey man, I'm doing well. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Well you know the thing that I love to do is introduce to the community people that they may not know they may not have an awareness with they might not you know It's like hey let's highlight somebody here. Make sure that people are informed and educated about what you're doing why you're doing it and how you got here. So talk a little bit about your LinkedIn journey first and then tell us what you're doing right now with the coffee and your mental health and let's start the conversation.

Yeah. Bunch of rabbit holes we can go down. So my LinkedIn journey. I came from a talent acquisition background. I was on the agency side of recruitment. So I was spending all day every day on LinkedIn. And I started to see just different trends I started seeing some of the same faces pop up. I was connected with like you know like Kristin Shari and Gary Frey and some people in the Charlotte area. And that just kind of led me down that rabbit hole as I was you know I was just really curious especially being I guess a millennial. I didn't really spend a lot of other time on social media. But being on LinkedIn all the time was like You know I might as well figure it out why I'm on here. There seems to be something to it. So I just start playing around with it man start reaching out to folks started setting up phone calls and lo and behold you know start to go into some of the linked and local events here in Charlotte and eventually I just recently became last year. Yeah, last year the linked and local host. So you know it's been a really cool adventure man and I've met some awesome people some of my best friends I mean heck Chris where I work with the Sugar Creek coffee we met through LinkedIn a couple of years ago I was messaging him about something completely different.
And we just so happen to connect and stayed in touch and he ended up having some needs, later on, I wanted to get out of corporate America. So yeah I'd ended up just spending a lot of time on LinkedIn because of the nature of my work and then I end up winning one of those whole care life packages that Lyla Smith and a bunch of those other folks put together.
However many years ago. So that was pretty neat and that kind of like introduced me to a lot of the other people that were connected in their slow ecosystem.
So that's kind of the LinkedIn piece in a nutshell.

Yeah, it's amazing how connected you can actually become and not even become aware of it because it feels like family right.

That's Right

It's like ok Linkedin local. Now that you're a host, you go and you show up and if it feels like almost like a family reunion it's great seeing those people and telling them it was a great post the other day or what great content they are putting out. It is always entertaining and educational to be engaging especially with the Sugar Creek coffee company you know you have something there as a common goal and a lot of people have that interest. I know I saw you on Brenda Meller Show and she was talking about coffee and she's a huge fan of coffee. And she actually has a coffee mug display and a few things like that.

We had spoken before and that's when I saw her little coffee mug thing and like you know what am I. We'll see if she wants to try some coffee out of state. And she really likes it. So she's become a huge fan and a really big supporter for us.

[4:32] Oh that's fantastic. I really appreciate her and all the things that she does, Lila Smith the same way, you know she's going to be on the show she's going to be up and coming.
And I've got so many wonderful guests and I appreciate the time and all the gratitude in the world for you showing up Lee and talking about you know some of the things that we're doing here. And you know in your corporate background you know going out after recruiting and things like that. That's a completely different opportunity than the coffee company.
So what's your focus now and what is it that you're excited about what's the thing that you're most excited about?

The thing that drew me to talent acquisition I had a mentor that came into my life and happened to be a relative, I came from a two stoplight town so I didn't really have many resources. I didn't know what I was going to do. You know my parents weren't too business savvy so he happened to come into my life and just end up showing me there was a bigger world and he ended up owning a staffing agency back in his time. And I was like wait you can make money by finding people jobs and having conversations, I was like, sign me up! So I would drive back and forth from my hometown to Charlotte walking in like shaking these folks' hands and I finally got on with a company. But I enjoyed it man. You know the thing that I learned from it is just it goes back to LinkedIn as the relationships and that's why I wanted to get out on my own so I could start harvesting those relationships a little bit deeper and not just worry about finding a person for that but actually look at the entire culture. That's kind of what ties into the coffee thing for me is Yeah I was doing sales and talent acquisition recruiting and then, that's pretty much what I'm doing now in the same sense that I'm doing sales relationship building operations just wearing a bunch of different hats.

Sure.

But it just goes back to the premise of relationships and that's really the cool thing about coffee for me. Because I always liked good coffee but I know a lot about coffee I didn't even,
know half of what I know now and learning about it a little bit more just to me it's a good excuse to have a good conversation and bring people together and then you know if you can enjoy a good cup of coffee while doing that it just enhances that experience even more so. That's what I'm really excited about I mean we've got an amazing product. We've got good things and really we try to deliver a white-glove service and that really is what differentiates us as you get into like high-quality anything. You know you're comparing apples to apples all this one's a little bit sweeter. This one's a little bit that this one's a little bit this. So how do you differentiate yourself in the market against everybody else? And so for us this is truly the relationships like we don't push anything on anybody we don't set you know signing crazy contracts to say look this is us this is how we operate this is our personality, you know we're here to serve you we're here to get to know you here to be friends like you know let's have some coffee and you know share experiences together that's kind of what we do.

Yeah, I love that and that's the whole purpose of the pirate broadcast is I just wanted to put content out consistently and invite interesting people doing interesting things.
And coffee is I think universal. I think it is fairly well known and like you said the differentiator is the relationships you have and I just want to take a moment here and give a shout out to some of the people that have joined us so far Lee. Angie Good morning, Celeste thank you so much for being here. Randall, he's down in New Orleans and happy day. And so Lori, Arcot,
Sheri Lally Good morning. Good to have you back. David good to see you. Celeste doesn't drink coffee maybe you drink tea. I don't know maybe you drink water. I don't know but I know that there's a common goal around a conversation on LinkedIn is a common conversation. Coffee is a common conversation around a lot of times in the workplace you know balance and some of the things. And so what's the thing that you noticed Lee going from a corporate environment now and you know kind of getting mentored into that space and the sales and the marketing and now you're doing operations you're doing sales you're doing relationship building is it the same type of task or is it is a much different environment?


Much different, much different. And we can tie this in the mental health here a bit but. I mean a lot of corporate cultures are just toxic. I mean I hit a pretty low depression a couple years ago and you know and going into those environments for eight hours a day we're not helping you know in certain things you hear in these places and it does not contribute at all to good mental health. And then you take that and multiply it by X amount of people we're all bringing the stuff that we have going on from our personal exterior lives into that and then you're adding these people that just have no empathy or care or you know its numbers, it's money, it's this. So you know I was always a high performer and did well just because I needed it to survive and I don't come from a family with money but completely night and day man and if I had to choose one word to sum it all up it would be trust. Is that a lot of companies you know they hire these employees you gotta work your way up the food chain and the little mouse game and, it's only when you get to a certain level when they start to trust you a little bit more and when you've proven yourself and when you've given enough to them that's you know like really a monetary value for us. It's nice because Chris he trusts me and that's what's been the best enable for me to thrive is that I have an entrepreneur mindset, I've got my own little projects I'm working on but it allows me to be able to be creative in something I haven't been able to be creative because I feel like public schools and a lot of things crush my creativity growing up. So it's been able to harvest just this environment that I've been able to thrive in because I can be myself I can be trusted that treat it like it's my own company and we're true partners man we're true colleagues and so he treats me as an equal. You know we're just a three-man team. Technically like his first employee/partner you know hopefully it's going to grow into more. But it's just trust, it's being able to thrive in an environment where some guy knows that you can represent the brand well that knows you're going to do right by others that knows you're going to do what you say you're going to do. And it's just being treated like an adult. And I've seen that in corporate America regardless of how much tenure or experience you have trust and that communication really lacks big time.

Well, it's interesting also because it's you know it's part of integrity it's part of the ability to think outside the box and in a startup environment you're in early stages in any company.
You have an opportunity to really think differently you know be differently. You know as the saying goes and as you know someone that has creativity, because I believe we all have creativity we all have the ability to create. Sometimes we have to give ourselves permission and that goes back into the mental health issue as it's like OK. If you've got these years of baggage and the things that are inside your head telling you you can't do it or you know someone once said that you know why are you doing that. "That's a dumb idea" or you know putting labels or designations on you are not necessarily true. So I think you know you broke out of the corporate mode and you went in and you made some adjustments to your life and how did that benefit your mental health and the state of mind that you're in and also how does it influence your creativity now.

So those environments just always press me mentally because it was like you had it's almost like a false reality. You had to be and act like somebody that you completely weren't.
And it's like this big song and dance game and I tell people it's like high school times 100 almost. It's like you know you take that same mentality of high school with all these little clicks and this and that and gossip and all this and then you take it and put it in the adult world and it's even worse because we've got more resources and a little bit more knowledge and a little bit more like, almost hate you know some people have that more malice involved money at least school you know you're not chasing money you're chasing grades but you know you throw some money in from these cats and it gets bad man. So you know for as far as my mental health goes just those things would just throw me in a spiral especially when I didn't really love myself until like a couple of years ago. Like you know I probably love myself for the first time and I'm 27 and so and twenty-six, twenty-seven years I realized that like I had hated getting in my own head and hated my own thoughts I like I tried to escape everything but then really I realized that I had a lot to offer I had more confidence because growing up I had no confidence at all.
So I call it the pendulum swing so like you know it goes from one extreme to another and I'm just trying to find that balance and going through those things I'll be forever grateful because I did see those times where I had no confidence or any self-love, and so just working through that just did not help in the corporate environment at all because I still have some self-discovery and do and I was always genuine but everybody was always so guarded and jaded and figuring out how to get their money or doing this or doing that. It could be the industry I was in and who knows about it differ it differs for everybody. But yeah. Getting out of that and into the coffee company that boosted my creativity because it gave me again that word trust that trust and freedom to like you know what. Let's try this you know it's not costing us much money you know we're not going to like show bad in public so let's try it. And so that's the thing to like in corporate life if you just give people the opportunity because a lot of times you don't even have the opportunity if it's not in your job description don't even think about touching it.
So I think we just had to let adults be adults let people be people and let us have fun because we've taken the fun out of everything it's just like you know life's one big game it's very serious but it's not so serious all at the same time so, we can find that balance. I think it helps a lot of people.

Well I think a lot of people are coming to the realization and you know I preach kindness and I share the kindness is cool and that smiles are free for a reason.
And I know that you know every day is a gift. You know it's like you wake up and it's like holy cow what an amazing world we live in that we can do things like this.
This conversation is you know magic compared to 20 years ago and the fact that we're here and we're able to do these things is you know pretty life-changing for a lot of individuals especially in the creative world. You know and all of a sudden you're seeing different platforms you see in different conversations and with all of that good you know that good and beneficial outcome is also a dark side because a lot of people are you know they're looking at their phones all day and there in their own head and they're not really communicating or having conversations like this and they're chasing the algorithm and also in the workplace things are moving quicker things are moving faster the paces are up. The stress is up. The anxiety is up and you know you know my personal experiences the suicide rate is up and that's not the best outcome for humanity in my opinion. And also I live in technology I love technology and I love looking at new things and how they work and you know my curiosity is always up. You know my antennas are out for looking at new stuff and it's really about this idea if we can actually slow down and like you said to have some self-care and self-love and understand that we're still human. You know we're all the same species here and we need to really think about what other people are doing and how they're doing it and how we can help each other.

Yeah. You said you said a few cool things, man. I was actually talking to somebody yesterday about the speed and how everything just rapidly like speeds up and that's what's funny is like,
you know I think this dimension this world is very slow like our pace is supposed to be a lot slower my mentor used to call it slow hand and that's what his little reminder used to be. But I think we're trying to speed up, even see some of these videos on LinkedIn they're so choppy and I think they look cool and they've got a cool little emojis and stuff popping up but like what does that do to our attention span. Like we can't even watch a video that's you know more than two minutes. That's not like chopped up and like quick and to the point like that.
We can't like hear the flow in the conversation so it's an interesting time for sure.

I can't prescribe to any outcome. I can only suggest that there are times where it's great to put it on pause and just walk away from it. Go to the woods or go take a walk or you know to change your state of mind.

That's my favorite thing the woods.

And I think that if people realize that that's an option we know that they can turn this off. You know it doesn't have to stay on and just walk away once in a while. I think that would be beneficial for everyone. And you know connections and going out to eat or you know I spent time with my son last night you know we went out to dinner and had some great conversations and we were laughing and having a good time and it's one of those things that you can't remove or you can't have that time back right. So let's try to enjoy each other's company and talk about things that matter and you know that's another hashtag I love is make it matter because we're here to make an impact in our world and everybody has a gift.
So I want to ask you, Lee, you mentioned earlier that you know a school kind of crushed some of your creativity. So if you were your 5 year old self now what kind of creativity would be showing up in the world right now.

You know I've just always been a connector, even if I'm not even involved in something or I don't know anything about whatever's going on I love just making that connection and being part of the experience. Like for example, I've got a little like DSLR camera I suck at it, I'm just learning manual mode and all that. Just now I've had it for like a year I haven't done anything with it. I have a decent eye and I have always been afraid to try because we always want to do something and be perfect at it the minute we start but you know I went out to a little music video recording a buddy of mine does media and stuff and so just being in that realm and that experience is like putting ourselves in different, areas that were uncomfortable in, just to have fun going back to that is like I think even like as my five-year-old self and as I got older I wasn't having the fun. You know I had a good childhood and whatnot but I wasn't having fun I should have because I was so caught up in my mind now looking back at that as you know I would just learn to let go and trust it's just you know I used to battle with the word faith quite a bit and,
I think regardless of what religion you subscribe to then, I think we can all relate to a little bit of faith and just having that trust of things that's unseen that we can't necessarily put words to because words mess up a lot of things sometimes it's back to your point that silence and I grew up in a little small redneck town so I grew up hunting and stuff. But the biggest thing I remember about hunting is that just that stillness you could tell like whatever you know if it was a squirrel that was jumping on the leaves or if it was a deer or a person was walking through the woods or whatever. So it's like I love going back in nature and just sitting there man I've gotten into like mushroom foraging and some other cool little things that give me an excuse to be out in the woods because to me that is where you don't have those power lines you don't have the traffic and it's just like the symphony of nature you can just hear it, especially when it's still and the animals start coming back out. Man, this is cool.

Yeah. It's very cool and I think if we can realize the power of silence and you know it's becoming even rarer every day. And it's amazing what you can do when you're in your own head.
And I think a lot of us and myself included you know, we fail to produce an outcome or an output of some kind because of the judgment that we feel others may place on us.
And that's the end of the day it's really a lot of people don't care what you're doing because they're wrapped up in their own world.

And then our own narratives on top of that we think like say one person out of 100 is like oh you know what Lee's crazy like he is out there he's into some weird crap that dude is weird.
I take that one example and apply it to everybody. Now I'm telling this narrative to myself like oh my god everybody thinks I'm crazy. It's what we tell ourselves and then like you said what we're kind of like trying to get from other people man because it's just like you said earlier it's so much easier to just smile at somebody than to like you know to judge them or say something.
I've learned that especially at this age, it is none of my business if you want to something as long as you're not harming anybody and hopefully not harming yourself. I don't care what you do who you do it with where you do it, just as long as you're not hurting anybody or causing damage. It's ok.

All right. Yeah. It's so funny because you know when you know perfect like you mentioned you know you want to wait until something is perfect to put it out there but perfection just,
crushes productivity and there is no such thing as perfection it like okay just put something out there ship it make sure that you're doing something you're getting started I was having a conversation with, Gabriel yesterday as a matter of fact last night and we're talking about the opportunity to start a podcast and I gave him you know some tools and some platforms that you can use to start a podcast. Super easy and for free. And you know sometimes we make it too complicated. We make it so overwhelming that we really can't get started because we're stuck in our own head about how this needs to look and what it needs to be when in reality if we push something out the door then we could see what it produces and get some feedback and then we could see what it looks like and we can play with it and you had to put it out there and figure it out before you can see what's happening with it so you know it's like when you're roasting coffee you know you get a certain combination of beans and until you've actually done that batch a few times you really don't know what the outcome is gonna be.
I'm sure I haven't roasted coffee, however,

I write it is like alchemy. You know you got to do the air the temperature of the gas and it's just trial and error so you dial it in

Just think you know if Edison hadn't tested things ten thousand times. You know it's like the light bulb might be completely different right. All right.
Or all of these inventions that we have there are connections there are failures that evolved into happy circumstances. You know so.
So it's really about the idea that we can actually put something out there. Test it. Try it and evolve. So just go ahead.

Just have some patience.

Yeah just have some patience. Give yourself permission to produce. That's the whole point of the #PirateBroadcast. You have permission to do it. I give you permission. You have permission.
Go do go out and create right now So you're a pirate. So Lee let's talk about some of the things that I want to wrap this up and I want to before we walk away from this today I want to make sure that we have a conversation about workplace behavior and some things that we can think about to change our behavior or modify our behavior and either in the workplace or in life in general. I know it's something that you've been interested in working on and in sharing and if you can kind of maybe speak to that a little bit. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

I think number one you have to want to help yourself. I think you have to want to I don't want to say like everybody gets stuck on like personal development the word especially corporate America that's a word that's overused but you've got to want to understand and know yourself because everything is already within you already. So you are who you are already. There's no working up to who you are. You just have to align. I use the word align a lot yourself to who you feel you should and that starts with like being honest with ourselves.
We lie to ourselves constantly when we lie to ourselves how can we be accountable with everybody else right it's back to self-love if we can't love ourselves then we can't be the best spouse the best dad the best co-worker the best boss. So first and foremost I would recommend people just start working on yourself. Like you said go out in nature, paint. Do whatever you do that that brings you joy to your life. And that brings creativity and excitement just a sense of Awe. And then you've taken that new mindset into corporate America and then to me you know people used to tell me all the time, oh you know you're 27 years old you don't know anything about the culture you've never managed a large team you've never read this book. You don't have an MBA. See that's the problem with half of what we're talking about like all these things you're trying to put these parameters and boxes on to say that somebody doesn't have this certificate that they sat and paid for. That's not very hard to do I'm not knocking anything but like if you have a halfway decent brain you can put yourself through any type of education but life experiences you can't buy or mimic or replace. And so my life experiences and the way my perception is yes I know a little bit about people and especially my mental health. I've lived it.
So I'm always trying to help somebody just at least share what I've gone through and then they can Frankenstein their own because I never want somebody to do exactly what I did because it's not going to work. That's what I hate when people get to LinkedIn and they're like oh follow these quick five easy steps to become successful or do this or do that work for you. It's not gonna work for everybody. you can't package this up and sell it to everybody think and it's gonna work. You know how willy nilly. So you know when you get these corporate environments and you know if you're in a leadership or you own a company you just put yourself in other people's shoes I think when we do that it's solving a lot. As silly and simple as it sounds it solves so much because it puts it into perspective for one and for two you're able to see both sides because there are always two sides to everything there are a million sides everything.
So putting that into perspective and then just realizing that culture is just a combination of different people's different behaviors ideas perceptions that you're aligning to a common goal.
That's all it is. And so how do you know the population to work together efficiently. It goes back to trust and freedom. Just let people be who they want to be in the culture as long as you hire good people and their intentions are good. You don't have a problem.

A little bit of compassion and empathy goes such a long way. So as we wrap this up Lee and I get on with our hopefully busy days we can be productive. What was what would be one thing that you'd want to leave with the world today and that we can actually share and enhance the value of the conversation here.

I guess if I had to say one thing just looking back on my own life and just my own journey I just would say like you know give yourself a break have that patients. That's one of my worst virtues is that I have been working on patients a lot and then having my first little one helps me tremendously with that I would just tell people that just enjoy the journey be present in the moment and give yourself a break. I've always been my number one critic and that's why I didn't have any self-confidence I didn't have any self-love because I was constantly feeding myself Oh you idiot you're fat you're this you that you know. As long as you're moving forward it doesn't matter if it's this much or that much you're moving forward.
So it's not a race as cliche as all you hear these other quotes like just everybody's on different life path and life journeys and if you come across somebody like you and I did but wave the hand let's have a conversation and let's break bread and then let's help each other because I think, life is very much individual but is very much collaborative it's like everything else is a balance.
So I would just say just be easy on yourself and get to know who you are and then just follow that inner voice that it's within you.

Well, we thank you so much for joining the #piratebroadcast and now you're an official pirate. So you know that comes with benefits and opportunities right. So. So let's go out there today and let's make sure and thank you, everyone, for joining us. Angie, Gabriel, Arcot, Lori, Kenyatta, Thank you so much for being here Celeste and Sheri Lally, all of the individuals that have joined us today and the people that are out there listening to the replay connect with Lee if you're not connected, reach out to him start the conversation and let's have a little bit empathy, compassion in our lives and.
As you always know
#kindnessiscool.
#Smilesarefree so you
#enjoytheday
thanks, Lee.

Thanks for having me, man.