Dig Deep To Fly High

Karl Staib is the Founder of the Dig to Fly Method. He trains people to use this method to find opportunities in their struggles. He’s been featured by Forbes and National Public Radio and has worked with great companies like Phillips Global and Southwest Research Institute. He has speaking chops. He’s spoken to Fortune 500 companies about using their struggles and turning them into stepping stones. He has a passion for improving the mindset that has no bounds. His real expertise is helping small business owners get a new mindset. When that happens, their business starts to take off.

I always love to ask my guests to tell their own story of origin and you can certainly take us back to childhood or school or when you had your own struggles with health issues or your father passing, wherever you want to start the story.

There are many different spots because a lot of it stems from childhood. How we connected was because my father was passing and you connect with that story because your father passed a few years ago as well. It’s important when we go through a struggle, like a passing of a loved one, dying of a business that we dig into these thoughts and emotions. My son watched a little video that my older son created. It was these animated little characters. You do still frame. One came into the frame and made fun of the other, then the other’s shoulder slumped and he sulked out of the room.

My youngest started crying. A lot of empathy. I was like, “That’s great.” After crying, he’s like, “Can I watch something?” It was a way to soothe himself because he didn’t want to feel these feelings. I was like, “It’s okay to be sad. It’s all right.” When I was growing up in the late ‘70s, ‘80s, the boys were like, “No. Dust yourself off, get back out there. Don’t feel these things.” Our world is changing a lot. When we do feel these things and when my father was passing, we can either ignore it or we can soothe ourselves with alcohol, video games, TV, sex, whatever but we’re not paying attention, and not tuning in. When my father passed, it was this fork in the road of like, “What am I going to do here?” I knew a gratitude journal is one of the best ways to help process things. That’s what I did. That started me on the whole Dig to Fly journey. I went all in and now I have this method that I help small business owners with.

You have a book called Bring Gratitude: Feel Joyful Again With Bite-Sized Mindset Practices. I know we’ve heard the importance of gratitude, but I’ve never heard anybody use it as a way to deal with grief in particular. That fascinated me because I thought, “How wonderful to have another tool in our toolbox.” Gratitude does many things and your process certainly does that. Let’s talk about what your issues are about? How does someone find gratitude when they’re going through a crisis, whether it’s a business or a personal crisis?

When I first started on this journey back in 2016 when my father went into the hospital, I’ve done research in the work happiness space. Back in 2008, I started a website called Work Happy Now. I spoke and I trained people around work happiness. It was hard. People didn’t get the concept and in 2020, things are shifting. In 2021, we are becoming more empathetic and we are becoming a more compassionate culture. That’s amazing because back in 2008, I would reach out to companies and my employees are lucky to have a job. What are you talking about? Now years later, it’s a big shift. What’s amazing about this opportunity is we have these tools like gratitude but we then can say, how do we apply it?

That’s when I came up with the Dig to Fly Method, because I realized it wasn’t just gratitude that I was using. I was digging in underneath these thoughts. I had testicular cancer and one of the things that you have to do with testicular cancer, or if you’ve ever had skin cancer or know somebody that has, you can’t take that piece of cancer. You have to go around it because it will metastasize. There are these little hairs that keep going. You have to go even further around it. That’s when I was like, “I need to not be just grateful for things. I got to understand where these feelings are coming from that I’ve been so afraid to think about and process.” I noticed when I started doing that, I reduced my procrastination. I was happier. I was taking on bigger challenges because I wasn’t as afraid. That’s when I was like, “This is something powerful.” Would you like to try the Dig to Fly Method?

I’d love to. Let’s jump in and show people what it is.

Do you have a current struggle that you’re dealing with right now?

I would think the big struggle I have sometimes is a lack of patience. I expect things to happen faster than they sometimes do. Whether it’s, “I thought I’d be booking more speaking engagements than I am now. Why is this taking so long? It seems like everybody else is able to speak more frequently than I am. What’s the missing ingredient?” That’s all tied together. The biggest struggle is getting comfortable with the unknown of when the next gig is coming.

I love it because a lot of people struggle with this. On a scale of 0 to 10, zero being, “This isn’t a struggle at all,” and ten being, “This is overwhelmingly the biggest struggle I’ve ever dealt with in my life.”

Seven.

Why is this a struggle?

Because I love doing it. I have gotten such great feedback that I have a wonderful impact on helping people become storytellers, and how it enhances their career in their life. It feels like this is what I’m supposed to be doing. When it’s not happening as frequently as I would like it to, it is a struggle because I get frustrated thinking, “Am I not doing something right?” I’ve gotten past the not feeling good enough, which used to be part of the struggle. Now the struggle is, how do I create momentum?

Why do you want to create momentum?

I know there’s a great book about the tipping point. I remember somebody saying, “The more you speak, the more you speak.” I thought, “What does that mean?” Now I have had an experience of it where someone will be in the audience that will hear me speak. They’re like, “My wife works at XYZ Company. I’m going to tell her they should talk to you.” That is what I mean by momentum happening. Your confidence level continues to go up the more you speak. Your skills are finely tuned and you have stories ready to go about how you gave a great talk and how it gave everybody a great impact. That’s why momentum is powerful. It helps our energy and our confidence.

You said the word impact. Another reason why you want to make an impact on these people, could that be another reason too?

Yes, because the more momentum I have, the more people I’m reaching, the more impact I have. Ultimately, that’s what we’re trying to always do, create some legacy.

What are your expectations? Where do you expect to be at this point?

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