Living Human Documents: A Chaplain on Presence, Compassion, and Marketing with Matt Heyn

[0:00] catching up before the mic goes hot

Matt Heyn: Did it.

Dan Korus: What's up?

Matt Heyn: Here we are, baby. Finally happened.

Dan Korus: Sorry for the I know. I'm so excited.

Matt Heyn: I love that you have a c is that a cat that's just kind of

Dan Korus: Yeah. I got all my animals in my podcasting studio right now. This is this is Fox.

Matt Heyn: Hey Fox.

Dan Korus: So she'll be joining us today. How are you?

Matt Heyn: I I've got good. I got two cats actually. And

Dan Korus: nice.

Matt Heyn: one of them we had a fix because they were just going everywhere, you know, relieving themselves. So now we put them in the bathroom at night and he's doing good. No incidents. we can't get rid of him. He's so cuddly. His name's Cheddar, Garfield Pumpkin Simba Hain. So the kids gave him like four names and

Dan Korus: Dude, that's an awesome cat name. That's pretty good.

Matt Heyn: It's it's he eats human food, which the other one's like very posh and her name's Autumn. She sounds like a

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: privileged white girl from you know, some Beverly Hills high school. And she acts like it. She's just like, This is my home, you're here. I don't wanna deal with that. Don't talk to me. So

Dan Korus: Yeah. Okay, but cheddar what like what kind of human food does cheddar eat?

Matt Heyn: Not anything. lasagna, oddly enough, he loves cereal. He loves not just like hum not just like he'll eat eggs, like I don't understand him. So that's

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: why that's why he got his nickname, you know, Garfield. So

Dan Korus: I get it. When you know, when the world turns to ash, I think Cheddar will still be alive. Cheddar will find a way. Cheddar

Matt Heyn: Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

Dan Korus: seems resilient. Yeah. really?

Matt Heyn: He got into his first fight the other night too. He got a little scratch on his nose. Yeah, he's being initiated, you know. He's only he's only a year old. He just turned a year. So

Dan Korus: Mm. Okay. Yeah, so Cheddar's Cheddar's young and is figuring out the the boundaries in the in the neighborhood, huh?

Matt Heyn: Yeah. I guess we all have that stage. We all have to do that.

Dan Korus: Yeah. How are you?

Matt Heyn: Good. all over the place, per usual. in app development right now, getting some good feedback on that. Have to write another newsletter for next week. Haven't even gotten to that yet. We went on vacation to Big Bear for a good time. So that that was An unplanned vacation, we just had to take it for two two or three days and

Dan Korus: Wonderful.

Matt Heyn: so you guys are in color are you in Colorado? I'm trying to remember. New Mexico. Man, hot out there.

Dan Korus: I'm in New Mexico. I'm in New Mexico. You know, it's not as hot as you'd think. If you go down south to Albuquerque a little bit lower, it is hot. I think it's like ninety five today, but which I guess

Matt Heyn: Okay.

Dan Korus: isn't that hot 'cause I think there's spots in Europe there's like a hundred and five right now or a hundred and ten or something, which is wild to me. But

Matt Heyn: Okay. Yeah.

Dan Korus: where I live in New Mexico, it's like eighty and breezy. Like really nice. It's wonderful.

Matt Heyn: That sounds better than what I got in you know, San Gabriel Valley, Monrovia, Azusa, Pasadena. It's like just scolding hot. Yeah. It's terrible. And muggy and smoggy and all that. How's it going with the EQ stuff?

Dan Korus: Wow. Yeah. Yeah, okay. I gotcha. Yeah. So EQ stuff is going great. We've done a number of different pilots. We also did our first virtual workshop last Friday. And that was a blast

Matt Heyn: Mm.

Dan Korus: actually. I was thinking that it would be crickets and that we wouldn't get good engagement from the folks.

Matt Heyn: Mm.

Dan Korus: But we wanted to do a virtual format so that way we could test out new content and also kinda like engage family and friends and like our close network. And I thought it was a lot of fun. So we're doing another this Friday and I'm actually really excited for it.

Matt Heyn: Nice.

Dan Korus: I think my weak point is definitely sales. and so while I'm good at building relationships with people once I've opened the door and they like know what I do.

Matt Heyn: Mm.

Dan Korus: I think getting people to that point is like definitely something that I haven't cracked yet and I'm just trying to brute force. So

Matt Heyn: Mm.

Dan Korus: That's the good, that's the bad. Otherwise I'm having a ton of fun. the team that I'm starting to assemble is amazing. So I'm

Matt Heyn: Mm.

Dan Korus: feeling really blessed and fortunate. So Yeah.

Matt Heyn: I hear you on the sales thing. That's making those transitions can be awkward, especially if you like start with your warm network, which are people you know, you know, your brother, your your your

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: cousin, your family. And then you're trying to make that transition. I did that recently with a cousin of mine. He's an app developer. He's been doing

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: HTML since he was fourteen years old. He learned how to build a website from a news newspaper. He's just one of these geniuses. And I've been known for being a minister or a chaplain. And then suddenly I'm talking to him about marketing. And you know, it's like the spider sense is going up. Wait a second, this this doesn't seem normal.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: This is not how I relate to you. And

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: we ended up pitching to him a logo guide, and he really liked the offer. Ended up going not going with us, but he liked the whole approach. So happy to talk about what we've learned in terms of sales, especially in those awkward places.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't mind that at all. I was looking at your package and I was like, shoot, maybe I should give this a try. so we should definitely talk about that in the future.

Matt Heyn: Two.

Dan Korus: Yeah. So you wanna do a podcast?

Matt Heyn: Yeah. Yeah. It's I know. This feels this feels a lot like Substeck Live, you know, where you're just like

Dan Korus: Yeah, it does.

Matt Heyn: just getting together and and talking. I noticed that yeah, when

Dan Korus: Or meander around, yeah. Uhhuh.

Matt Heyn: when the it changes the relationship too. happy to talk

Dan Korus: In life.

Matt Heyn: about that. 'Cause I think part of a emotional intelligence and part of nonverbal communication is also these larger outside time and space shifts that I'll talk about with Yvonne Agazarian. that when you have that shift, it it actually controls or changes the the element of the relationship too. So yeah. I don't know what I don't know if we've already started or not. I just I'm happy to be here.

Dan Korus: I mean I think for like a cold a cold beginning. I mean, I don't know, I took a couple bites my breakfast, so maybe we haven't started yet, but I think

Matt Heyn: Ha ha ha.

Dan Korus: I think it's great. I just kinda wanted to introduce you so that way we have a spot to start from. so

Matt Heyn: yeah, that's a good idea.

Dan Korus: tell I'm gonna read this paragraph and you tell me if I got it all right. So, and do you pronounce your last name Hein? Pain?

Matt Heyn: So so funny. long story.

Dan Korus: Okay.

Matt Heyn: Whenever I go t whenever I'm in the military, by the way, I have to end a eight. Sorry about that.

Dan Korus: That's fine.

Matt Heyn: whenever I go into the military or I mean talk to someone from Europe, they always say Hein. That is the correct correct pronunciation. But since we came here to the US, my family immigrated three three generations ago. it switched over to Hain because my dad had a had beef with his dad and he wanted to stick it to him and he knew that would really piss him off.

Dan Korus: Hmm.

Matt Heyn: So I had no idea

[7:48] what does a chaplain actually do all day?

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: about that till much later. So I'm comfortable

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: with Hain. All my kids say Hein. Everyone I know in California says Hain. but you've probably talked to another Matt Hain and he'll probably say Matt Hein, so I don't know.

Dan Korus: Yeah. no, actually all the HY H E Y Ns I know are all Hanes, so yeah.

Matt Heyn: okay. I think it's more of a I've asked someone, is it Dutch? And and when I talk to my German friends say, No, it's German, but it's probably Hein, but because you're North American you're gonna say Hain 'cause it's just what we do.

Dan Korus: Yeah. It's just what we do.

Matt Heyn: Yeah. so a little bit about me.

Dan Korus: So w do you wanna do you wanna follow your dad's footsteps or do you wanna go

Matt Heyn: Exactly. I know. So I tried that. I tried switching. And sometimes I still switch just by accident whenever people are trying to get pronunciation right. Because when I say Hain, they get H A I N E, they get all sorts of things. So I thought, I'm gonna break free, you know, from this storyline and from this pain of legacy and bitterness and revenge. And so that didn't work. everyone I knew when I came back to LA was like That doesn't make sense. so the Canadians say Hein, because I was there for eleven years and then the everyone I know growing up in LA says Hain, so it's yeah. No resolution. Sorry.

Dan Korus: So it goes, man. that's okay. Alright. Our guest has spent sixteen years as a hospital chaplain and twenty years in ministry before he ever ran a marketing campaign. He learned that presence is either authentic or it's theater, and that a clipboard closes a conversation before it opens. Then he's walked into marketing and found that the chaplain's job and the marketing analyst job are actually the same job. So today We're going to talk about that, the similarities, and how do you learn emotional intelligence? For Matt, it's not in a workshop, it's at a bedside. more at the Strategy Signal, Matthew Hain, welcome to Kestrel Edge.

Matt Heyn: Thank you so much. And thank you for saying Kestrel Edge, because I always read a Crystal Edge for some reason, but that that sounds better too. Yeah. Okay.

Dan Korus: that's a different thing. Yeah.

Matt Heyn: Different pronunciation. It's a pleasure to be on this. we we

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: have been talking how this happened was we were on Substack, which is a great community if you're not on there. And

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: you asked a question about I think emotional intelligence, and I went off

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: and gave a paragraph about what we've been training chaplains in in terms of nonverbal communication. And it spiked an interest and that's how we got here. So happy to be here.

Dan Korus: Happy to have you here. I really appreciate you making time. it's always fun when we schedule a couple of months out, you know, from something that's really warm and nice and I was like, Okay, I'm really interested in meeting you. And when we first met, on our first video call, I was like, my gosh, I have so many questions about emotional intelligence. And I think we even started talking about some of these things and talking about your past and your history. And I think one of my biggest regrets so far is that I didn't record that conversation because I actually thought that that would have been a really beautiful like thirty minutes

Matt Heyn: Hmm. Sure. By the way, that happens a lot on Substack Live. We'll like not record and we'll have a podcast and then it's even better than the podcast episode. It's like, why didn't we just r always record things? So I totally hear you.

Dan Korus: I I'm new to this. I I should be turning on my camera on more and I don't have that influencer instinct to just record my life yet, so

Matt Heyn: Well, I don't I think something happens when you're not officially on camera that's kind of magical.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: Talking about sacred time and space. there's more vulnerability, there's less formality to it, and the information comes off less prescribed and more more organic somehow. and so I I had that with John Hode. We were on Substack. No, we were just talking together. And it was so good. And then we tried a second session where we turned Substack Live on and it was good. It was really good. We had a lot of good chemistry, but there was also a sense of like something changed. Something changed to the relationship. And so one of the things that and I'd be curious to pick your brain about this too, if you've ever covered this, but because the the so what is the setting? So sixteen years of sp spiritual care in two countries in the US and And chaplaincy.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: what is that setting? So we're it's kind of niche or niche, depending on how you use that word. But you know, you train as a minister, you train within your religious denomination, and there's lots of regulations like to become an endorsed, to be endorsed by a faith community itself is just a whole list of application needs, background checks, and and so on. Then you need a master of divinity, usually in the US, so that's a good three years and you So I had nine years of theological studies formally before that. I trained seven years before becoming a chaplain, like before actually having my full-time job as a chaplain. So can you imagine like like what do we do for seven years? You know? And

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: then and then, you know, it's so I I tell students who start off that they say, Well, I, you know, they're taking one 12-week unit of clinical pastoral education, which is our the name of our training, also known as CPE.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: And they say, Well, what when can I get work? I'm like, it's only your first unit. Try going seven years without having any work and then come back to me and tell me. It's really

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: a calling. It's not just a career. And that's really important for people to understand. So what is that calling? Well, if you're in the military, you're jumping out of Humvees, you're jumping out of helicopters, you're or you're in like I did for for four months. I was in the 364th Sustainment Command in Marysville, Washington, in the Army Reserves. And it was just corporate. Office chaplaincy. You're walking around offices, you're you're in cubicles, you're telling people, you're catching up with people, listening to people, trying to pick up on the culture, and you're trying to pick up on what people want to say and what they don't want to say, and trying to earn trust. And it takes a lot of time. healthcare chaplaincy is where I felt more called. And in that setting, you're highly regulatory industry. So we're talking about. Second most regulated industry compared to number one, which is aviation. Everything else is underneath aviation healthcare in the US. So I end up having two certifications, one with the educational body, ACPE, and then one with the chaplain C professional body, which is APC. Won't say what hospital I work at because for copyright reasons. But you know, you go into a room. And you go room to room, you're assigned different wards in the hospital. And when you walk in, you don't know who's there. I mean, you can pick up some about culture, something about history based upon the name, and maybe even want to open up the medical chart note. But I usually tell students not to do that. Because then you come in with your biases, maybe even some transference and things that you are bringing to the to the conversation that weren't a part of that initial relationship with them. And you walk in and you have no idea what's going on. You don't know their culture. You could get a completely different religious mix. You could get someone who's a Theravada, atheist, Buddhist, white Canadian, or you can get a Shia Muslim who is just coming in for town for with friends from Pakistan. You can get you know, the run of the mill, you know, 80 year old beginning stage dementia, white Californian. and just everything in between, non-gender non-binary, transgender. you can have people who are just finished a transgender surgery, right? And they're they're dealing with who am I now? I planned up to this point, but I really don't understand I need a new storyline now. So

[15:36] the verbatim: how chaplains train emotional intelligence

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: emotional intelligence became just a regular part of our curriculum in CPE. became an essential component because within the first five seconds, just like a good sales copy, you know, if you can't capture my sec my attention on a website in the first three seconds, I will just move on because attention is very scarce in the digital relationship environment.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: So in the same way, if I walk into a room, the person can't really leave because they're institutionalized, right? They're kind of stuck there to get healing and recovery that they need. The advantage that I have, I have I'm an able-bodied person in the sense that I can choose to leave the room if I want to. So

Dan Korus: Right.

Matt Heyn: if you're going to talk about spirituality or or religion or try to connect with them, there's an initial three to five seconds of building rapport that has to happen on an intercultural, interfaith, intergender, interracial kind of basis. and that kind of training usually is more a simulation style. we do written verbatims which is the patient said this, I said this in parentheses, I felt, thought, did this. And it will go into all sorts of things, which can include things like emotion and thoughts and cognition. It could also include distortions, transference, counter-transference. All sorts of analysis happen in that verbatim written document. And students say they get some of the best insights for patient care through that and about themselves.

Dan Korus: So okay, so there's a there's a conversation that happens and somehow it's recorded or not. then this verbatim

Matt Heyn: Not recorded.

Dan Korus: so this verbatim document, how does it how do we create it? How does someone go create this when they're training?

Matt Heyn: Well, there's a template that we use.

Dan Korus: Okay.

Matt Heyn: And there's no there's no IP on it. It's about a hundred year tradition. It started, hospital chaplaincy started with Anton Boysin, which was a Presbyterian Christian minister who suffered with at that time they called it schizophrenia, but I think what they were pointing to is more of an affective disorder, which is closer to bipolar.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: And so he had several manic breakdowns. And every time he had one, he saw it as an invitation to get to know himself better. And that would help him get to know his patients better. Also at that time, there was Richard Cabot. Richard Cabot was a leader in the social worker area, and he brought the idea of a verbatim. And the verbatim was it the CPE education was basically in order to really connect through a healing relationship with people. You need to have sympathy, empathy, compassion. And to do that, you need a head, heart and gut or head, heart and hand kind of teaching philosophy, also known as, you know, the diadactic, which is the educational I'm just providing some information. the IPR, interpersonal relations group, I'd love to talk more about that because to me that's the heart of it. And and that's what we use for heart training. To develop compassion, to develop empathy with one another in the real time. And then there's the verbatim, which is the case study, that that's the hand part. And what includes in that, and I'm getting to your question here, is

Dan Korus: No, yeah.

Matt Heyn: there's a real dialogue. Okay, so there's a setup. Where did you see this person? What was the sacred time and space of that location? Which is to me the very first important thing of emotional intelligence or even social intelligence or any kind of human intelligence is. Where are we meeting? What is the purpose of this time and space? So chaplain language, we say identifying the sacred time and space. What are the sacred time space boundaries happening here? for you and I, just you know, going a little meta at the moment, we're having a a podcast where the most honest part of our communication is actually missing, and that is what we do with our feet. And that's completely cut out of the picture here. So my feet right now are pointing to you as I'm sitting down. But throughout the podcast, my feet might be pointing to the exit, which I have over there, or might be pointing to the garage door, which might be over there. which is probably indicating that I'm either uncomfortable or I want to leave the conversation or I want to go other places. Or my attention is split, is often the case. So if you're talking with someone, you're standing there and For us, you know, the one patient's foot is towards the exit, another patient's foot is towards me. They might be contemplating some kind of double task and they're multitasking as they're listening to me. So I have a split attention filter happening with between them and me. So a verbatim would actually focus first on what is the time and space that we're meeting? Is it a hospital bedroom? Is it a coffee shop? Because oftentimes I'll take psych psychiatric patients and walk them over.

Dan Korus: Nice.

Matt Heyn: Is it my office and we're having a leadership discussion? Is it admin rounds? and then it's like, who are they? what's their racial, ethnic, cultural, national, background? I know that's a lot to lump in there, but sometimes you don't have one information, you have the other. their age. you don't want to discriminate against someone's identifiers, but they are information. so if somebody is 85 years old. a new widower, I'm gonna have a different kind of conversation than a five year old in pediatric care, right? Who's really obsessed about Paw Patrol. I'm not gonna talk about, you know, I'm not gonna talk to them in the same way. It's a different culture, different style, different way of understanding each other. and then and then we go over the location and what was happening at that time. maybe even something about their gender if if that's, you know, something that's coming up. Or their sex. And all of this is what Anton Boysen, the founder of CPE, called living human documents. So every rather than going to seminary and studying text and studying Hebrew and Greek like like I did, his emphasis was, what if every human being is a human a a living human document? And that they have their own script, they have their own syntax, their own grammar, their own history, their own background, their own autobiography, their own lens and POV on the world. And saying how do we it how do we read them in a way that's faithful, not in the FBI way of reading them, which is more about getting to the truth and like I own you because I have this knowledge that you don't have about yourself. And and then that leads to toxic leadership, right? Coercion, manipulation, using your information against you.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: So when Anton Boyson talks about living human documents and writing a verbatim, it's all about a faithful, sacred reading. It's almost like reading a sacred text. I'd come to the text, I'd come to the living human person with the expectation that I don't know everything, that I am I'm humble, that I'm here to learn, and and that I can observe certain things about Dan because I I can see you, right? And there's certain things I might see that you might not see about yourself, but it also goes the other way too.

[23:24] what you wear is already part of the conversation

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: Matt's wearing a hat right now. That tends to cover up the the forehead, which is where people trust each other the fastest, right? it's also part of my brand, so I just wear it, or is it because

Dan Korus: Ha ha ha.

Matt Heyn: I wear it because I don't want to deal with messy hair in the morning. I just want to get started, jump into a podcast, make a video, and just get going. So we don't know the intentions of why Matt is wearing a hat. It's just he's wearing a hat and this has impact on the other people who are who are viewing. And as a responsible clinician, I have to think about what I'm wearing, my skin color, my my way of talking, my national background, my gender, all have an impact on the patient's first three to five seconds.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: And so I want to minimize as much as possible in that caring relationship any kind of barriers to the communication

Dan Korus: And then mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: that that could happen. And so we

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: go a lot, we have a whole dress code policy, and I spent a year trying to develop it for our team. And it was really controversial. Are we gonna

Dan Korus: Really?

Matt Heyn: are we gonna have ties or not? Hugely controversial, yeah. Why? Because A, it's a safety hazard if you wear it. But also B, there was this long standing tradition that we are professionals, that people don't take chaplains seriously. We need to be, you know, professionals at it. And this is how we're gonna do it. We're gonna have all

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: the men wear ties. It's just a tie. It's just like religion. You know, it's like,

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: do you have to eat that thing or not? You know, it's you got some who are like, it doesn't matter, and you got others who have entire volumes and libraries of books around why you can or cannot pick your nose on the Sabbath. That actually happened In Israel, there was a three-year law debate over whether you can pick your nose. And the reason for that was because there's a a passage where if if a hair falls out or if you pluck a hair, then you've broken the Sabbath. And so the fear was that if you if you pick your nose, then you know hair might come out and then you've broken the Sabbath. So they debated three years over this. And I think the the national conclusion, if I remember correctly, was Yes, you can. You can pick your nose on the set.

Dan Korus: Well, that's good to know. I was the perfect. I think so, no, this is really

Matt Heyn: I know I gave you a lot there, but

Dan Korus: great. I just want to ask a couple more questions about this and then I want to tie it back into, you know, what you're doing in in and marketing before we zoom out. So I think the the verbatim sounds really interesting and and what you've told me so far is that as a chaplain, there's an incredible amount of learning and training that goes on.

Matt Heyn: Yeah.

Dan Korus: To actually become a chaplain. And you said it's a highly regulated industry and that there's all these philosophies, tools, and techniques around developing different emotional intelligence skills to be able to sit with people during some of the toughest days of their life.

Matt Heyn: Mm.

Dan Korus: And So this first tool, verbatims, right? I think initially you mentioned it almost like it's like a captain's log, like a journal of a conversation. And you said, Okay, this person says this and then I said this and I felt, you know, saw, heard thought these things almost like you're reflecting and journaling about the conversation that happened. So

Matt Heyn: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: there's the initial information and then there's the sort of breakdown diagnostic, you know, intensive where you're annotating the conversation that's occurred. Is that correct?

Matt Heyn: Yeah, so to be more concrete, students

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: from memory. This is actually a really good tool. It's been going on for a hundred years, as I mentioned.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: the students will you know it will say like C C one colon chat for chaplain one. how are you doing today? Right. And then it will be P1 patient's response. And somewhere in there is a parentheses. Parentheses is what I'm thinking in the moment, what I'm feeling in the moment. And you'll go through the whole conversation by memory as best you can. It can be really long, could be a 15-minute interaction. I've seen verbatim that were five minutes long. I've seen verbatims go up to two hours long. which, you know, brings up the question of scope, like what is exactly expected of someone to have this kind of interaction and for how long. And then at the end of it, there's an assessment. And the difference between chaplains and other healthcare team is that anybody can do a a a screen. A spiritual screen, also known as yeah, it's like your triaging need. It's very brief. is spirituality important to you? Yes. Great. Okay, let me refer to a chaplain. it's very simple. And then there's spiritual history, which is second level of clerical inquiry, and that's like Faith, for instance. you know, what's your faith background? A, you know, what's what's my assessment of that? or hope, you know, is another good spiritual husb spiritual h history. And any staff member can learn that too. But spiritual assessment is uniquely for a chaplain. And so we all have different there isn't like a standard spiritual assessment, there's a lot of different kinds of diagnostic minister, diagnostic tools. And that was another interesting combination was the minister and

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: the clinician coming together as this tension. And so I've been feeling that as a minister and a marketer as having this kind of hybrid identity role and tension. Why that's important is because when you have the hybrid role, they pull on each other as a as a tension and that tension

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: holds the identity together. But if your readers or your listeners want to try a verbatim, the most impactful part is actually administrating the teaching part of it. So what we do is we will sit together and we will reenact the verbatim in the room. So we'll okay, where were you standing? where was where was the patient? How was the patient? What was their energy? And we'll have that chaplain who was the chaplain to the patient act as the patient

Dan Korus: Okay.

Matt Heyn: in order to get a whole different feel and a whole different identity. to look within this

Dan Korus: okay.

Matt Heyn: the feeling of and almost create a kind of theodrama. Sorry about

Dan Korus: Yeah. No, no, this is great. Okay, so if you and I were going to do a a if you were gonna instruct me on a on a verbatim that I just did, I would act as the patient to the best of my

Matt Heyn: Yeah.

Dan Korus: knowledge, as with my script, and then you would act as how I was in the room.

Matt Heyn: Yeah. So you would be the other person that you had this interaction with that you were

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: struggling with or there was something that came up that just didn't feel right.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: And then the facilitator would then explore that relationship, asking the inside experience of the patient. So you're not Dan anymore, you're Phil, you know. And Phil, what was it like to hear Dan tell you, you know, line C twelve? And then I read it out, you know.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Matt Heyn: and it's not very once it picks up, the facilitator isn't really doing a lot, you know. It's like good listening.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: You know, it's not

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: it's active, it's it's pregnant, it's it's pregnant silence, not awkward silence.

[31:12] the atheist patient who gave me my faith back

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: and you're enabling them to go deeper in themselves. We've had chaplains just cry in the room, like, wow, I didn't see it that way. Like I really

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: felt what that other person was feeling. And and there again. they begin to expand their compassion and their empathy as opposed to contracting it and being in this religious informational kind of space to tell people what to think and that and to try to fix things. And so this irony happens that when you don't try to fix it, it fixes itself and it it has a way of healing itself.

Dan Korus: Okay, this is amazing. I think I found my new favorite tool and I don't think you're gonna be the last chaplain that I have on the podcast. I think I need to explore this space more.

Matt Heyn: Cool.

Dan Korus: yeah, I I don't Okay, well this is the first time I've heard about any of this.

Matt Heyn: Well we haven't even talked about IPR. IPR is a whole nother, you know, a ball of wax too.

Dan Korus: Should we talk about IPR? I'm trying to watch the time 'cause I wanna talk about the transition between chaplaincy and marketing, 'cause that's really important to you and that's kinda who you are right now, right?

Matt Heyn: Yeah, I don't know. I don't you know, it depends on your readers and and listeners, like what what's your niche and what's most important to you. I'll maybe I'll just say this real briefly because it it ties

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: in most directly to EQ. I

Dan Korus: Great.

Matt Heyn: think people generally have a very easy time doing patient care.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: the because the power differential is pretty clear. I'm able body, I'm this professional coming in, and I'm helping you, you know. By the way, this great story when I I lost my faith. I I was an atheist for three weeks, you know, during that seven years. Did I sit did I bring this up last time? And

Dan Korus: That sounds like a sitcom, Matt, the time I was an atheist for three weeks. I wanted to ask okay, keep going. Keep going.

Matt Heyn: Yeah, I know. And I I was promised a job. It had been seven years,

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: nine years of theological seminary. I was certif you know, I was I put in all my paperwork for certification, then I was told we don't have anything for you. And I'm up here in Canada and I'm like I I that's it. I must have done this all by myself. I had no help, no leading. I'm an idiot. What was I thinking? You know? I mean, seven years is a long time. And then I had four residencies too, which are these

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Heyn: one-year periods of training. And so I'm talking with this patient who is an atheist. And I'm just somehow they started asking questions about me. They were listening. And I was

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: carrying this anger, this hatred around, you know, and lit and they're listening, and they're, you know.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: But it almost sounds like you're you're not an atheist. And I was like, yeah, you know, there are these times that things happened and it was pretty miraculous. And it's like, wow, you know, and it sounds like you almost love God. And I was like, yeah, I kind of do love God. And I started crying. And and this

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: is like very poor practice, right? Like, it should not be about me, it should be about the patient. But

Dan Korus: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Matt Heyn: I'm having this spiritual experience because someone's empathizing with me and listening to

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: me from a totally different orientation and background.

Dan Korus: Well.

Matt Heyn: And by the end of that conversation, I left. I'm like, I am a Christian. And and then I ended up getting a job and and

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: became a professional leader, managed 24 chaplains, wrote a national curriculum, and and

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: our life was set there for like 11 years. for the three for three or three or four more of those years. So it's just funny how you have to be o the spiritual, the sacred, it It will it it it's not like other professions where you're or this view maybe of other professions where you're not changed in the process. You will consistently be changed in that process. Sorry. So

Dan Korus: Yeah. No. No. I I just think that's a fantastic story. I really like it.

Matt Heyn: I was also losing immigration status at that time too. Cause I all my friends are being sent back to their countries, you know, and

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: and they didn't renew my my status either. And I was just like, What am I doing here? you know. I got two

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: kids and a wife who's not working. It was just like, What are we doing? What are we gonna do? How are we gonna live? I

Dan Korus: Yeah. And it's so funny that the atheist patient was the one who flipped the script and brought you back to your faith.

Matt Heyn: Yeah. Totally. It's a very moving experience.

Dan Korus: That's cool. Do you can I ask one quick question? Yeah.

Matt Heyn: And that's why we're spiritual care. We're spiritual care because everybody has a spirituality and

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: there's something to learn from everybody. It's a microcosm of how the world could be.

Dan Korus: Yeah. But shit, that's beautiful. Do you think studying religion makes you more or less religious? I've always wondered that.

Matt Heyn: yeah, I mean there's another question too is is there a difference between spirituality and religion? That's another good question.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Okay. Guess you kinda just said that, yeah.

Matt Heyn: does it make you more religious? So if you ask religious people, if you were to do a survey that they've done some research on this,

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: most religious people consider themselves spiritual.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: And what does that mean? It means that They are not only ritualistically and by law doing things according to a larger system of thought, but religio in in Latin means to bind together, which is

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: what spirituality is for most people. It's I feel connected. I feel connected to myself, to my community, to the sense of the divine, to something bigger than myself. Usually we call that transcendence. And I've had this experience. And I'm open to having experiences again and again. And my my my spirit, my soul is alive. there's an unhealthy but often accepted dichotomy between being religious and being spiritual. And unfortunately you can't really fight it because people are just gonna say it anyway. and that is that religion is dead, dry. It's a system of thought and spirituality

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: is alive, more of a feminine mode of being. It's about reception and r reaction and creativity and art, right? Which is hilarious

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: because if you look at religion, you look at those who claim to be Catholic or Protestant, that I mean, Darwin was a Protestant and he came up with the theory of evolution.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: You're gonna tell me that's that wasn't a spiritual thing for him, you know, to to be in conflict with his community around that. So I forgot your question. I think it was around. do you does reading text make you more religious? That's a great question. I I I can't I

Dan Korus: I was just curious. I mean you spend like seven to eight years or nine years, you know, you spend the be the better part of a decade thinking about these things and

Matt Heyn: Mm.

Dan Korus: wondering about it and engaging in it and diving deep. And I've just always wondered, does it make you feel more religious, more spiritual? You know, do you feel I don't know. What do you think?

[39:00] does studying religion make you more religious?

Matt Heyn: Well, there's there's definitely a joke around they call seminary cemetery. So you got a bunch of these non, you know, non denominational pastors who don't go to semi seminary because they hear about people going there and then they stop reading their Bibles, they stop praying, they stop acting anything like a Christian. And that's partially due to universities like CPE also came out of liberal Protestantism, which is taking the world seriously. And in doing that, you somehow abandon your original faith convictions for another worldview, which is known as like secular humanism. I'm certainly guilty of that. I think if you were to take a ledger and look at all of my actions and practices, which is what James K. Smith calls cultural liturgies. I'm actually developing an app for this right now for a client, because they're an endorser. It's actually my endorser, which is funny. they want to have an assessment over whether you are in the faith or not in a way. And well anyway, you can use AI to take a ledger of all your actions and then look at those actions philosophically and say, what do those actions point to? Because there are no neutral behaviors. Every behavior points to a worldview and to a set of values and to a story. And I think if you were to look at my life and look at what you saw, it would probably lean closer to secular humanism. not it's just I'm trying to reconcile that. It's like pointing back to myself the difficult critique. And that I learned while at Regent College was to take the world seriously, but to apply my own hermeneutic or way of reading to to me as a living document. How do I read myself? How is this living document playing out exactly? Did it really start with the original convictions? We started back in high school where we felt these very passionately. Has it changed? Has it morphed? If it stays the same faith as it was in high school, and I've met people like that, there's a simple there's a simplicity and a purity to it, but also it's somet it's kind of babyish. It's kind of wrong. It's like watching a and I'm sorry to say, it's like looking at a a man child. It it's like you haven't really thought through those things, like you've you're still back over here. I mean the devotions there, you know, we're still reading the Bible. But we're reading the same way, reinforcing our prejudice, reinforcing our bias, reinforcing our preferences around who God is or not. Have you ever thought about opening that and challenging that? And a lot it's scary. It's absolutely terrifying for people to do that. And it's uncomfortable. And honestly, I'm a victim of not wanting to do that work. And

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: just like, I did a lot of that work. I want to do other work now. You know?

Dan Korus: Yeah. Do you think so I I was talking with a American family therapist last couple Sundays ago. And he had this view that Richard Reynolds he had this view that people live their life, especially leaders. You know, leaders and and family members live their life in these two stages. And stage one is, you know, before they've questioned themselves and they're living under the assumptions of and the learned behaviors from their childhood and everything that makes them safe and who they are and how they've learned to fit into society. And then stage two is when this awakening happens, right, where they begin to question, like, why do I have this defensiveness or you know, where is my anxiety? coming from around this or why do I have a tendency to people please in these situations? Why am I reactive here, there? And in when in in going into this, you know, heightened state of self reflection, then we become a better leader who's actually and maybe a better husband or a better, you know, family member who's able to do this. And it it kind of sounds similar. Do you think that sounds similar?

Matt Heyn: yeah. I mean there's such chaplains would never say that they're therapists or counselors. that's a

Dan Korus: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: whole different set of scope and education and also you need to have understanding of psychopathology and

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: so there's a lot of respect there. but again that hybrid identity in education CPE was the clinical psychological s mix, mixing with

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: the shhamonic, pastoral, and even psychodynamic. ideas coming together. And that's certainly what people experience around CPE. one of the first chaplains I met, he said, I my wife has been married to nine different husbands. That's how he started. And I said, That's that sounds really bad about your wife. And he said, No, I just went through CPE and my wife was married to

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: I changed nine times. And I go, Okay, okay.

Dan Korus: What would she say? Does she think that she's that she's been married to nine different husbands?

Matt Heyn: Yeah, that good question. I wish I asked that. Actually I I'm not sh

Dan Korus: I don't know, like is it an evolution? Is it like an incremental gain? Is it a chipping of the block? I don't know. Can I ask you something? Yeah.

Matt Heyn: Probably more of a morphing than a incremental, more maybe more incremental non anxiousness. We

Dan Korus: Right.

Matt Heyn: we use a lot of negative theology, which is non judgmental. What what is that? Why not just say I don't judge people? Yeah, but that's that's negative. So what what

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: is the gain exactly? Negative theology is all about the unknown and embracing

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: the unknown, which happens a lot in our IPR setting as well.

Dan Korus: Yeah. That seems like a nice reframe. Yeah.

Matt Heyn: Helping it to sit at the edge of the unit. So yeah.

Dan Korus: If I sent you a leader and I said, Matt, I've got a leader here who wants to learn emotional intelligence. How would you teach them?

Matt Heyn: I poo

Dan Korus: Good luck, by the way.

Matt Heyn: There's their setting. So

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: where who are they leading that I'd want to know? I'd want to know what is what is happening. why is there an interest in emotional intelligence taking place? what's their story around emotional intelligence? and then where do they want to go? I think I think we have found that What makes CPE transformational education as opposed to the academy, which I again, there's a lot of years spent in the academy. So now as an educator, I can I can teach CPE students. And it it was a combination of things that they found in the last hundred years that got to that question. One was individual supervision, so that's an hour a week in an intensive time, 12 weeks, let's say, or a part-time six-month. venture, where you explore your process. It's process oriented over being results oriented, which is completely contrasted with marketing in many ways. And in other ways, marketing is very similar because if I'm writing a copy, if I'm writing a copy for a website, it's the artistic process of going into the ICP, going into the psychographics of the audience.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: And developing something usually from the unconscious, that is where I get my best copy. AI is fantastic and does a really good job, but it's actually the unconscious where we get the the best ideas that connect. and then from that individual supervision where we're helping them to process, there's a sense sense of safety there. But they need practice with their target audience. So if you're a leader who's leading people, generally EQ and nonverbal communication. I see the literature mostly around public speaking. So like when I'm talking, my hands are open or you know, I don't have my hands in my pockets, you know, that kind of stuff. and there's there's some phenomenal like public speaking EQ nonverbal communicators online who are and that's a whole different finesse and and skill level that I have a huge appreciation for.

[46:48] how do you actually teach a leader emotional intelligence?

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: so if you're a leader and you're trying to lead your team, whatever team that is. having a s a season of individual supervision where we can talk through what had happened. And we have a whole process note where people process for an hour and a half to two hours per week on themselves, looking at their thoughts, their feelings, their behaviors. And then a time of individual case study. okay, so you're a leader with an employee, go through the verbatim. What did you say? What did they say? What were you thinking? And go through that. But the most transformative piece has actually been part of a group of other peers that are going through the process together. So in this case, a group of leaders who have a similar

Dan Korus: Okay.

Matt Heyn: have maybe similar or different audiences together. And we call it IPR, and that's the heart of CPE. And that's where you sit in a circle, in my opinion, no table. You could see the full body sitting there. And We utilize the Agazarian method, which is utilizing functional subgrouping. There's lots of different theories. Every educator has a different theory and a different opinion on whether it should be a table or not. and it's about the transfer of energy going back and forth. And so every week having that group to talk about each other and to talk about the moment, and it's so fascinating and so difficult and yet so simple. you know, I'm in the irritated boat. You know, because Shelly, there's something about your shoes. I don't know what it is. You know what? I guess it reminds me my mother. Wow, Shelly, I just realized that you remind me so much so much of my mother, and that maybe I'm relating to you as my mother, but I'm not relating to you as you. And then can we talk about that? You know? And it's just that's a kind of weird conversations happening in that group that's like, okay, you know, you know, huh?

Dan Korus: Tell me tell me that happened. Yeah, tell me that happened.

Matt Heyn: Yeah. weird stuff happens and

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: conflicts and mitigating those conflicts. And so having that so seems to be that combination

Dan Korus: So yum.

Matt Heyn: that creates that transformational, it's like group

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: work, individual work, and then case work that all together leads to more compassion. And you know, at times as a manager, you should not have compassion on people. You should have sympathy.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: I I don't want to come into work today. I have sympathy for you that it's hard to come into work some days, but you are to come into work. As opposed to compassion, tell me more. Tell me more about how you don't want to come into work today. That's inappropriate for a manager. That's not what higher level VP VPs want from their manager. So I think also having a difference, a foundation block for EQ is the difference between sympathy, empathy, and compassion. Sympathy, anyone can have sympathy, and you should have sympathy in a managerial role. Empathy is very helpful for leaders. It's a skill that you can learn. but compassion to me is a little more spiritual. And that's where you get into internal family systems therapy where it talks about the self as this kind of c clear, compassionate, almost capacity of choice, courageous, centered, what Richard Swartz calls the eight Cs. so yeah, I I think that's a foundational block is you gotta get those three distinguished and and you need to train them. So

Dan Korus: They need a they need a time to reflect, they need a time to practice with someone who knows what they're doing, and they need a group of people who are going through the same thing. Okay. Got it.

Matt Heyn: That is what we learned in a hundred years and that has what what transforms people. It's a huge process. It's not

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: easy. And you need to have a real mature facilitator who has some good theory and good experience because you know what? Shit's gonna happen.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Okay, I've got three more quick questions for you and then I'll let you go. someone's starting their first day of work tomorrow. They've never been in the workforce before. What's your advice for them?

Matt Heyn: build rapport with people. I

Dan Korus: Okay. Nice.

Matt Heyn: I don't know what the number is. I think it's like 50 ordinary interactions with people before they trust you. one of the challenges I had was I was stepping into really big shoes. My predecessor had been there for 45 years.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: I've never known anyone to be anyone anywhere 45 years. And so when I was stepping into that role, I needed to just read the room, be available, be present, not make any changes to the dress code. I didn't make any changes for a year and they were all coming at me. We want to change this dress. I'm like, I'm just I'm hearing you. I'm just gonna be here and just gonna notice things, you know. So I would say

Dan Korus: Yeah. Okay.

Matt Heyn: building rapport and just having ordinary interactions with people, don't try to rock the boat, let people trust

Dan Korus: Observe.

Matt Heyn: you. So

Dan Korus: I love it. someone who's in the middle of their career, maybe they're a team lead, middle manager, senior contributor. What do you got for them?

Matt Heyn: you definitely need to invest more. I I think most leaders, unless you're a sociopath who's just like skipped above everybody somehow, most

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: leaders hit that leadership stage because they had been doing what was before it very well and they were conscientious and usually a little bit strategically minded. So part of the struggle I think in moving from being under management to to management or even higher higher leadership is a it's a whole different game and it's actually more relational rather than less. So what you were rewarded for previously, before that moment, was being highly conscientious, on task and getting things done. In this new role, you're more rewarded for how relational, how people feel around you. Again, you know, it sounds maybe cliche, but it's really true. People really don't care. what you can do for them or what you know. They care about how they feel around you. And that's a big part of higher leadership is this it just becomes more political, more relational, and you have

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: to be have more finesse. So having a kind of dedicated time I think everyone should do CPE, by the way. I'm huge pro it doesn't you don't have to be a chaplain. It just changes your life. It changes your perspective. You see things from a whole nother angle. Therapy too. So we're all big, we all wear big badges of therapy. I've had, you know, it's like a it's like a show off. Like I've had I've had fifty sessions of IFS and I I was on the Freudian couch for nine years, like, wow, man, that's something aspire to, you know. So yeah, I think I think it's a different game and understanding how the game has shifted and that people are not coming to you so that you can do all the work. That has

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: that's done. People are coming to you for strength and delegation and And to make decisions. It could be the wrong decision. I tell my team that too. Hey, I don't actually know the answer to this. And if we need to make a choice, I will bear that burden and I will make a choice right now.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: And I may be wrong, but I can do that for you. And they just you just see them relax, like, you're gonna carry that. Yep. You know, Ernest Specker's book, Terror Management or The N Denial of Death. It's a great chapter there about leadership and death anxiety. You know, people just want a leader to follow so that they can relieve some of their own death anxiety around poor choicing. And if you understand you're coming into that game, then you play that game well and you own it and you and you shoulder it.

[54:36] what senior leaders have to get right: presence in five layers

Dan Korus: Good. Last question. Senior leaders, people at the top. What's your advice for them?

Matt Heyn: it's I maybe I jumped ahead too much.

Dan Korus: Same thing.

Matt Heyn: I I am not a VP. I'm not a CEO. What I've

Dan Korus: That's okay if it's the same. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Heyn: seen in great VPs and great CEOs is that they they are head, heart, and gut at the same time. Those are the best. to me, I'm dropping a name. Viv Vivian Ianopoulos, the CEO of a Vancouver Health Authority, fantastic human being. you when she walked she would walk the halls. And she, even though it got up to 30,000 employees with multiple sites, she made it her every day, every week effort to be at a different site and to show up there in person. And and

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: that teaches this principle of what we call geographical presence.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: in Agazarian, there's at least five layers of presence. The first one is you got to show up physically. You have to be there. Like this podcast couldn't happen if we didn't show up together, right?

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: So that's geographical presence. But the second one is psych psychological presence. So this is more ahead. and and that is I make eye contact. I show eye contact is a biohack for psychological presence. So I don't know if you've ever seen this, but like somebody will be talking to you, and then it seems like they're going someplace else. You know, their right foot is moving towards the door. Like there's this right now happening. gosh, I'm sorry. Sorry to do that too.

Dan Korus: I do that, that would be me. No. No, no, no. Not right now. Not right now. Yeah, but I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

Matt Heyn: But yeah, me too. Yeah. It's like I'm, I just realized back here that I'm I'm working on a a few things. I'm doing some app development, you know, in the back here

Dan Korus: Right.

Matt Heyn: when I really need to be listening to this person, right? and that's a that's another unique insight too about CPE is life integration and in a holistic approach. Maybe you have too much going on in your life rather than doing keeping the same amount of activities that you're doing in different roles. Maybe you need to cut something out so you can be more present for that thing. Or maybe you need to write something down so you can offload your memory so that your brain doesn't get stuck in a loop. Like there's lots of those tricks. But anyway, the second layer of presence is really psychological presence. It's I'm I'm here mentally with you and I just need a critical mass of that attention. It's not possible, we found, to have a hundred percent attention. If it does happen, it's kind of a mystical thing. And that happens too, but I don't expect it of myself. I expect myself to be just present enough mentally and emotionally that I am with them, just a critical mass of it. Just kind of like your nose above the water, so to speak.

Dan Korus: Okay. Yeah.

Matt Heyn: That's all that's really required of you. And that's all that people really need. And then after that you have effective presence. It's like not only am I here physically and mentally, but I'm actually here in my heart too. And I'm able to access my emotion for them. And really feel

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: their experience. And that's hard work because you have to be able to put yourself in their position and feel like what would I feel with this person who's describing it to me. totally different relationship. When I was a chaplain, I was being a chaplain to everybody, like every every conversation. I mean, my wife was going crazy. She's like, she she's like, You're driving me crazy because

Dan Korus: Really? Uh-huh.

Matt Heyn: I just want to know, do you disagree with me? You know, we're having a conflict, and I'll be wow, I could really see. Where you're coming from on that, you know. And she's like, stop it, you know, just stop being a mirror, be my damn husband, you know. And it took me time to learn that too. I had a like

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Heyn: understanding my role with that person and my power differential and my self-awareness. It's a multitasking switching kind of endeavor. It's it's exhausting. I'm thinking about you, I'm thinking then about me, I'm checking back in with you, I'm checking back in with me. What's the impact of myself? It's a lot of work. And because of that switching, it's very ener it takes the energy away. So I think for higher level leaders like the CEOs that I've seen, the VPs I've seen in healthcare, there's something they didn't have to be cr charismatic, but what they had to do was be present. They had to show up

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: geographically on a frequent basis. They had to make eye contact, be psychologically present and astute and competent and ready to take the leadership. And three, they had to show some heart. You know, they had a show like, Hey, I care, hey, I just noticed that about you. You know, I have a

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: CEO right now, he he just came in the other day to say, Hey, I love your blue jacket. He was wearing a blue jacket, you know. And it was just like, he sees me, you know. And

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Matt Heyn: was that producing a follower? I'm loyal to you because you see me, right? And you're doing more than just telling me what to do or educating me. You know, you're actually caring about me as a person. Now I'm loyal to you. So

Dan Korus: I love that. Where can people find you, Matt?

Matt Heyn: You can find me up on the Strategy Signal. I know we talked a lot of that's a funny tale that comes up. I love it. Just I wish my cats were here too. We'll bring them on together. maybe there'll be a better podcast as you interview my cat. We'll see. But

Dan Korus: I'd love to.

Matt Heyn: so you can find me on the strategy signal on Substack. I have a part-time marketing agency that I do off the side called Vibe. we do every everything from AI video trailers. To ghostwriting to Zoho CRM setup. We're all in one digital marketing and advertising agency with 65 plus years of a combined

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: experience. and then the Substack is interesting. It's a whole different community. That's really a marketing breakdown newsletter. So every week I take a marketing advertising campaign, I break

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: it down, and then I I show you. What's the forecast on that strategy? Again, high level, not tactical, whether

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: it will work for the that industry or not. And then I'm developing an app called the Signal Forecaster, where

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heyn: you can utilize it for your clients or your prospects for a full outreach strategy, as well as telling right now we're we're gonna trial it in August 29th for a person who's gonna do a conference in Berlin. And really exciting stuff. We'll see if I can get it up to standard. I have no coding experience, so I'm just using Claude Code and it's turning out really well. Which is a lot of fun. And so he's gonna take a picture.

Dan Korus: Welcome to the future.

Matt Heyn: Yeah, I know. He's gonna take a picture of the booth of his prospect and then he's gonna upload the images and then it will generate a presentation pitch deck within three minutes, and then he can send it to them and talk to them in his own brand. And so that's that's the first first stage right now. So

Dan Korus: That's pretty cool. That's pretty outstanding. Yeah.

Matt Heyn: So if you'd like to be a pilot on that, it's on every newsletter. love to have you try it out so I can get some more input.

Dan Korus: Matt, outstanding. Thank you so much for your time.

Matt Heyn: Hey, it's a pleasure being here. Let's do this again.

Dan Korus: I think I think we should do a live sometime. I think that'd be great.

Matt Heyn: Yeah. I I know I need the content. You could at least use the content to drive that content machine and feed it, you know. Yeah. Thanks, Dan.

Dan Korus: Feed feed the beast. Yeah. Yeah, man. Good job today. This was actually really nice.