Dylan Bain: It’s time to reject the domestication of a manufactured society and reclaim the human wisdom that lives within our hearts. Welcome to the human revolution. I’m your host, Dylan Vane.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the human revolution. We have a treat of an interview for you today My guests are Moe Barrett and Katie Stevens The most unlikely best friends building a world filled with unforgettable experiences that entertain and empower By using humor in the most unexpected of ways Moe is a retired Air Force colonel turned public speaker and Katie is a Is music and performance instructor turned co speaker and Moe Wrangler.

The duo collided at a barbershop quartet singing event, and despite all the ways that they’re different, they chose to lean into the strength of things they have in common, recognizing, acknowledging, appreciating, and leveraging their respective quirks. Together, they take the stages as corporate entertainers and educators on a journey to uncover the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Whether it’s the small moments that resonate deeply to grand adventures that shape us, Mo and Katie know that life isn’t just about the notable moments. It’s also about the often hilarious unexpected ones. They know that whether the event is mundane or monumental, there is meaning. And through all their endeavors, Moe and Katie leverage humor to disrupt the monotony and create unforgettable experiences.

I have to tell you that out of all the interviews I’ve done, this is probably the one that I’ve laughed the most at. When we finished up recording, I was just, my sides hurt. And so this is going to be a true treat. And without further ado, let’s get onto the show.

Mo and Katie, the human revolution podcast. I am so excited. You’re here. Welcome to

Mo Barrett: We’re excited to be here, Dylan. We are so excited to be here with you. But I’m more excited. So I’m Mo. Mo’s also more competitive. Yes, I am.

Dylan Bain: Fantastic. Well, I think that this is actually a good place to start. Just give me a brief introduction of, you know, Mo.

I’ll let you go first being the competitive one. Uh, then Katie, we’ll bring you in. Just give us the elevator pitch and who you are and what you’re doing in this world.

Mo Barrett: Oh, Lord. Wait, how many floors is this elevator? Honestly, what we are doing together is we want to create a world that is filled with unforgettable experiences that educate and empower people and entertain people because we want to use humor in a way that’s not normally seen.

So we want to use humor in unexpected ways. That’s really the elevator pitch of what we’re doing as. Unforgettable experiences. That’s what we want to bring to the world. That’s

Katy Stevens: right. And together we are Mo and Katie as individuals. Mo is a retired air force colonel, a distinguished 30 year career in the military.

I’ve run a music studio and a performance coach and I’m a mom and we are unlikely best friends who have chosen to lean into The things that we do have in common. And one thing we have in common is our weird, and it was kind of weird calling out to weird and, um, using and leveraging all of the things that we love about people and love about life and opportunities to widen people’s aperture and to change their perspective.

And it is so much fun. We’re having a blast.

Dylan Bain: So how did the two of you end up working together. I mean, that’s a pretty disparate life experience path. How did the two of you come together to bring your show into being?

Mo Barrett: So one of the things we do have in common is we’re both female barbershop quartet singers, and neither one of us sing the same part.

So I sing baritone, she sings tenor, which means that the odds of us being in a quartet together at this like speed dating, uh, for quartets that we were at. And, uh, we both ended up in a room with a bunch of people we didn’t know. And I was trying to have a conversation with somebody and Katie was on the other side of the room watching this conversation I was trying to have.

Katy Stevens: And Mo was asking the woman that she was talking to what she did for a living. And, and the woman wasn’t quite. Understanding she was like, Oh, well, in the organization, here are the things that I do. And that wasn’t quite what I was asking for.

Mo Barrett: So then I go, no, no, no. I said, like, what do you do for a living? I mean, for example, I am a prostitute. What do you do?

Katy Stevens: Said it with a complete straight face. Fortunately or unfortunately, I was the only person in the room that got that that was a joke and laughed out loud. And I think at that moment I was like, okay. I see you.

Mo Barrett: And I was like, okay, you can hang. I get your sense of humor, but now we need to get out of this room.

Katy Stevens: And several weeks later, we found ourselves in a newly formed a barbershop quartet together. And because we were a little bit of a distance quartet, we would spend one weekend a month. The four of us ladies together and just the conversations Mo and I would have in passing and sitting at the meal tables and playing games and the stuff we would laugh at.

I kept telling her, I was like, my gosh, we need to start a podcast. We need to start a podcast. And so finally she listened to me. It took her long enough. My gosh. goodness. But in March, yes, it was in March of 2020, literally about a week before the whole world shut down, we started the Mo and Katie show.

And, um, it’s just been our way to spread gratitude, humor, and positivity to everybody, anyone who wants to listen to us. And we were talking about you, Dylan, before we tuned on, because we’re actually in the midst of some rebranding as well. We know that you’ve rebranded. Your podcast and your brand, and we are in the midst of doing that as well.

Going from the Mo and Katie show to becoming Unforgettable Experiences. So that’s what we are putting everything we do passes through that filter and it all checks out. So

Dylan Bain: I love that.

Katy Stevens: So we see you, we get you.

Dylan Bain: Yeah. Well, then for me, it was wanting to have a broader conversation of our money, right?

Because when I’m looking at this, I’m saying, okay, you know, if I look at like, what are the, what are the most human things? Like human culture is the thing. And if you ask somebody like, Hey, what’s your favorite food? They’re going to say typically a culture, Thai, Italian, German, whatever. And so I kind of looked at him and like, Oh, what makes a human existence is food, relationships, heart, which I use for expression and lifestyle.

And that those pillars used to sit on the environment, but now they sit on our personal finances. And so expanding that out was a big part of the goal. So I’m curious in your own rebranding, where you’re going with the unforgettable experiences, like what in your mind creates that unforgettable experience that humans just tune into?

Mo Barrett: You want to take this one? I’ll take them all. So critically ask you a question. How did you come to your rebrand? Like, did you, was it something that was just like, you kind of start saw the through line in the conversations you were having or what calls your attention to the desire or the necessity to rebrand for you?

Dylan Bain: Yeah. So I’ve been working as a financial coach for five years. And you know, my first step when someone comes in the coaching practices, what is your financial vision? Like if I handed you 5, 000, 000 with no strings attached, what happens inside your body? Where does that 5, 000, 000 land? And we talk through like changing the mindset from what we’re going to do with the money to what the money can do for us, right?

Because most people want to spend a million dollars. They don’t want to have a million dollars. And as time went on, starting to realize like, oh, wait, hold on. These people aren’t bad with their money, they’re just suffering from a societal impetus that’s actually depriving them of money and looking at it and saying, what are the most effective wise?

What was the most effective things for my clients? And it was always the like, well, I want to have control of my money so that I can X, Y, Z. I can eat better. I can be a chef. I can entertain. I can be fully present for my wife. If I had the money, I could invest in therapy so I could learn to express myself.

I could have a lifestyle that I’m I is much more aligned with my values. Those are very human elements. And so I got to a place where as I’m coaching through with people more and more, that was the conversation I can teach you at a budget. It’s all for free online. You can go to our website and download a free toolkit.

There’s a step by step instruction. If you can figure it out, great. You don’t need me. Don’t hire me. That’s a waste of money. But if you’re looking at it and going, every time I look at my finances, I get sick to my stomach and I, because I’m afraid that you’re going to take away the things that make me happy.

That’s a different conversation.

Mo Barrett: You said a lot of people have a scarcity mindset, right? Isn’t that something you said?

Dylan Bain: Yeah, most people aren’t bad with money. They’re addicted to scarcity.

Mo Barrett: Wow.

Dylan Bain: They’re addicted to the adrenaline high of being in a scarce environment and, and running. And it’s huge. And so like we put ourselves in stories like one, for example, myself.

When I first started budgeting, I came home, I told my wife, who you both have met, and I said, Hey, honey, we’re going to reduce our grocery budget by 10 percent and she spiked the plate on the floor because she just freaked out because what I said was what I was trying to say was I want to have a financially stable future for us and our kids.

And what she heard was you’re going to starve my children. Oh, and so if we don’t have the human element in there, we’re going to run into stuff like that all the time So that’s how I ended up with the rebrand.

Mo Barrett: Yeah, nice. Well, I think that’s cool I think and like katie actually I don’t know why we rebranded but part of it was And the analogy that katie made I only have four legged kids so and you you have two daughters and you’ve got four sons, but you kind of made the analogy that When we first started this, we were like, uh, an infant and, you know, pissing and pooping our pants and stuff like that.

I’m not saying only Katie does that, but, but, but, you know, you’re still figuring what you said, your

Katy Stevens: ego, your egocentric, yeah, what kids are. You don’t see a three year old go. Oh, no. After you, you don’t get anything in its infancy is naturally ego driven until you figure out what you are. And we’ve spent a lot of time figuring out, and actually as we were prepping for TED in early this year, early 2024, we had to have a real heart to heart, like, what do we really believe to be true?

Why do we do what we do? Why do we interact with people the way we interact? And it all came down to two things, really. We wanted to disrupt the monotony of people’s lives, make them feel seen, heard, and understood, and that Life is full of these small moments that can be unforgettable experiences if we choose to look at them that way.

And I think that’s, you know, Mo and Katie’s show is a little vague, like, what are we? Circus clowns, acrobat, what are we? Spot on. But unforgettable experiences holds true to everything That we do, everything that we want to do when we get up and speak or do trivia or emcee or moderate a panel or do variety show.

We want that to be an unforgettable experience for whoever is there that gets to experience that with us.

Dylan Bain: So how do you drive somebody to have an unforgettable experience? What is the core of saying, like, okay, when I’m planning out this show, how do I make it unforgettable?

Mo Barrett: I think the biggest thing that we do is, well, a lot of things.

We are very, very calculated. And I think a lot of people take it for granted how hard we work. And that’s one thing I do definitely want to say is like, in fact, we just did a time lapse video of, we’re planning, we’re emceeing an event next weekend. And. I didn’t realize until I looked at the timestamps, but the time lapse video was an hour and 45 minutes worth of work just working on a script for an event that we’re

Katy Stevens: doing.

And it’s a script that’s got very intentional humor in it. It’s not a like serious academic script. It’s like very intentionally funny, but makes people feel a certain way and guides them through something at the same time. So yes, every word is intentional. But

Mo Barrett: yeah, but the first thing we do is we look at our audience like where are they and I think with any interaction, It’s looking at where is that person and then we don’t open the door and hope they’ll come to us. We want to go Just a little bit over halfway and in fact i’m looking at the place where we actually had this very deep philosophical question because we got done with a one of our calls prepping for Ted and we’re like, what the hell, you know, what do we do?

What what are we, who and then we we both had this deep philosophical question We said why do we do what we do and actually the one incident that came up was we were flying somewhere We were getting ready to get on the plane and i’m watching the flight attendant and it’s a 6 00 a. m Flight and she’s like good morning.

Welcome aboard. Good morning. Everybody’s like, yeah And I just remember thinking What a shitty job for her, like, she is so unappreciated because she’s doing her job and she’s doing it wonderfully, but nobody is acknowledging her, nobody sees her, nobody hears her, nobody understands, acknowledges, celebrates what she’s doing, and so One of the things that we do naturally is I don’t know if we have like this mind meld between Katie and I, but we just, we’re just like, we both know that when we, we see somebody living in that mundane, just that rote kind of pattern that we’re going to break it up somehow.

And so what happened was we got up there and Katie and I play for each other really well, but we got up there and we’re like, Hey, listen, I know that you’re going to be giving champagne out to the first five rows. We just want to let you know, we’ll be in row 38. Delta and Echo. So I don’t know if you’ll make it back there by the time the flight is over, but we are in 38.

We have our seat numbers, you know, and she just kind of left. But again, it was a disruption in what was an otherwise monotonous part of her task. We both crashed because it was like a red eye flight or whatever we were doing. We’re just out of sleep. We woke up and she came back for the whole seatbelt check at the end.

She goes, Oh, I’m so glad you guys are finally awake. She goes, I’ve been waiting the whole flight to give this to you. And she goes, Oh, I’m so glad you guys are awake. She goes, Oh, I’m so glad you guys are awake. And we didn’t do it to get you, we didn’t, we weren’t trying to get anything out of it. A little freaking flyer miles would have been nice.

But again, it was just about, we call it schwacking people, right? We want to see, hear, understand, acknowledge, and celebrate people. And I think everybody could go for a good schwacking now and again. So we try to schwack people as, as often as we can. You know, there’s your, there’s your quote right there, Dylan. I believe we swacked you at Bainbridge, didn’t we?

Dylan Bain: Oh yes, yes, it, uh, a good time was had by most.

Mo Barrett: Yes, I had a, I have a good mark on my shin from where you and Katie swacked me. Oh, we certainly

Dylan Bain: did. Well, I mean, what’s a little swacking among friends, you know, at the end of the day?

Mo Barrett: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Dylan Bain: Well, I, I love that spontaneity bit because I feel like, particularly in an airport, like there’s, airports are like the ultimate anti human place, like you’re about to get in a, in a tube and then it’s a chair in the sky. Your parents are freaked out. Kids are freaked out and

Mo Barrett: pilots are freaked out. Yeah,

Dylan Bain: they’re tired, you know, on their third pill of Adderall for the day. And like, I have always observed that like the simplest little bits of kindness or humor can just completely like bring everything in the room down.

I absolutely love that. I, my oldest daughter is very fond of saying when we travel, if Papa goes missing, it’s because he’s helping somebody because I’m a big guy. So I, you know, I’m putting people’s luggage in the top and stuff like that. And like yourself, I had somebody, they had one woman in a flight and she got real irate cause she was trying mid flight trying to pull her, her bag down to get something out of it.

It was one of those, those hard shell suitcase. So like, this is a big mess. And I got up and I walked up to her. I said, Hey ma’am, let me just hold this for you in the aisle. So this can be easier. And, you know, I put it back for him. And then the, the attendant came over and was like, what do you want to drink?

And I was like, uh, club soda. She was like, that’s not what I was talking about. And so when we landed, my wife and I were sitting separate in the flight and we get off and she goes like, are you half of the bag? And I’m like, I’m not, not half of the bag.

Katy Stevens: That’s true though, that you didn’t think about like, you’re a boarding pass. You are another person getting on. And we had another incident where we were flying out of BWI and this was just at ticketing and again, probably another ridiculously early flight. And the girl behind us had some sort of instrument case.

And Mo just said to her like, Hey, we’re going to be over at gate C if you want to come play for us. And, and the girl, it was crazy. She looked at us and she goes, I need this kind of joy in my life every single morning. And I mean, honestly, that was all that was said. She, Mo noticed that she had an instrument case and made that girl feel seen.

And it’s not that difficult. You just have to pay attention and just speak out and connect with people.

Mo Barrett: Well, that’s really it. Sorry to cut you off, but

Katy Stevens: yeah, but

Mo Barrett: I think the other part of it is we get so focused. And so I always say people just need to pull their heads out, right? We’re so focused internally.

And to Katie’s point earlier about our brand initially is we were so ego driven trying to figure out who we were. And it’s like, if we would just kind of pull our heads out and look out and notice things, and there’s some people, you know, that if they’re irate, maybe Probably best to steer away from them.

But you can see if somebody’s irate because they can’t get their hardshell luggage or they’re fumbling with it, you can notice those opportunities and learn to read people in order to read the situations and find out how you can interject and make their day a little better. And when you do that, that’s how that moment becomes unforgettable.

It’s not about making us unforgettable. It’s not about making ourselves unforgettable. It’s about making that moment for that person. And honestly, As long as that woman knows that she doesn’t know our names, as long as she knows, and even the flight attendant, she doesn’t know our names, but we had a moment of connection.

And I think it’s another big platform of ours is connecting to people and helping people connect to the surroundings, to themselves or to the people around them. And it’s very less ego driven. It’s not about us having given them an unforgettable experience. It’s about them having an unforgettable experience, however they get it.

So I think that’s the biggest thing too.

Dylan Bain: So when you’re working to craft something that they can take away as an unforgettable experience, I love how you’re looking at it. It was like, I’m going to meet this person where they’re at. What is your vehicle for when you’re saying like, okay, this person needs X or that my audience needs X, what is it that you’re trying to do?

That’s going to set up that scaffold and be like, Oh, I’m never forgetting this.

Mo Barrett: We definitely try to do things that are not expected and we definitely try to do things that include our audience. We are very, very interactive. We just got back from England and we did four gigs. Three were in a professional setting, workshops, and then one was a variety show at a bar.

And All of them have an interactive element, whether we’re doing Mad Libs or puzzles and we’re using audience, audience interaction. I think part of it is when people are engaged in something, it’s hard not to be disconnected from that because they have to be on their toes too. Let’s be frank, it takes the work out of us first, you know, it’s like, ah, you do the work.

But I think there’s something to be said for having people be a part of the experience. I mean, it’s the difference between being part of a crew and a cast versus just watching something from the outside. So I think having them engaged, um, and we do our research too. We know what’s going on in their community.

We know what’s going on. Uh, we know what issues to stay away from in the UK. We didn’t talk with the Royal family or any photoshopping things at all.

Dylan Bain: You’re kinder than I am.

Mo Barrett: I know, but you know, but yeah, but it’s about knowing where they are. And there’s a lot of stuff we don’t know. We’ve had a lot of gigs where people come up to us afterwards, people we don’t know.

They’re like, I needed that tonight. And we had no way of knowing that, but if we can just provide a way for people to just Be ridiculous for a little bit, but we are very, very humor based and trying to do the unexpected thing because we all go to presentations and somebody reads every font on the slide and every word on the slide.

We try to do the opposite of that. So we’re like, whatever the norm is, we want to disrupt that. But it’s also using some of the,

Katy Stevens: Smart humor, but smart humor. And a lot of fart jokes.

Mo Barrett: Yeah. Not just fart

Katy Stevens: jokes. Though I don’t mind a good fart joke once in a while. Just let it out. So I was gonna, yeah, there’s a flagellate pun in there that I, okay.

You’ll see pun face. Slipped right out. Just squeaked by, didn’t it? All right. It was silent, but deadly. Um, but really, uh, it’s fun playing. That’s an honestly, truth be told. That’s why I

Mo Barrett: like puns because you have to think, you have to think to make puns. So trying to elevate its sense of humor. I say, after I talk about Bart Dicks, this is, this is, this is what we’re giving you Dylan, sorry.

Dylan Bain: No, that’s perfectly fine. I mean,

Mo Barrett: it’s been a real gas. I know.

Dylan Bain: Oh man. Sometimes our humor stinks.

Yeah, you know, it’s, it’s funny when you, you, you talk about that, it starts to become a thing. I’ve been part of some men’s circles where like, you’re doing some intense work. Like I’ve been, you know, in, in places where people are working through the issues with their father, domestic abuse, the loss of a spouse, I mean, like lightning in a bottle type of stuff.

And invariably, after, after like, we’re, we’re coming out of that. Somebody will make a dick joke.

Mo Barrett: It’s usually me.

Dylan Bain: Yeah. I have never been in, in, in a, this serious. And I thought about it. I was like, why is it we do that? Right. Like there’s a lot of gravity here and I think it’s because of the gravity. I think it’s the fact that we would say like, Oh, I’ve gone through this thing.

We’ve talked about something serious. And by the way, we’re still okay. And I feel like that is, is driving a lot of the experience.

Mo Barrett: Yeah. And I think a lot of those times you have to do something to erect the mood, you know, you have to, yeah, baby. I just thought I’d, uh,

Katy Stevens: I thought you were going to say something really poignant, but you did not.

Mo Barrett: I did. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Stop. Stop. We actually had this, uh, we had an incident over here earlier in Annapolis. These three older women were walking. Go ahead. I’m telling the news. Tell the news. Three older women were, were walking around and this, there’s a streaker. I mean, it’s a Navy town, so stuff happens, but this streaker came and flashed these three older women.

And the first lady actually had a stroke. And then the second lady had a stroke. And the third one couldn’t reach

Katy Stevens: that’s her favorite. Joe,

Dylan Bain: I am so glad that I marked these podcasts explicit.

Mo Barrett: So I went to put my glasses and they’re not there, but you know, so to be a little bit serious right now, we study humor quite a bit and this sounds like a joke and it’s not, I’m being very serious, but in the concentration camps during World War II, they actually had comedy and variety shows. The prisoners would actually put on their own variety shows.

And there were some people who they would actually give up their opportunity to eat so that they could go and attend a show and laugh. I mean, that to me talks about how powerful laughter is and the levity it brings. I was looking at a quote from, uh, who’s the unibrow lady? Frida Kahlo, who, yeah, see, you guys are good.

I should refer to her as the unirile lady, but I mean, gets the job done. Y’all both knew who I was talking about. All right, pipe down. But she talked about how powerful and what a strength humor and laughter is, but I’ve never seen a picture of her, although it’s hard not to look at her mouth, but I’ve never seen a picture of her smiling or laughing, but that’s one of the things that she cited as, as calling a strength is humor and laughter.

And I think a lot of times it is when you least expect it that you most need it, you know, and I think about that concentration camp and I think about the times when, I mean, there are times dealing with like parents with dementia, like sometimes there’s all you can do is laugh. I mean, that’s all you have left to do.

And we just came back from lunch today and we had a little incident in the car and my partner said she mistook a weight loss drug instead of Wagovia or Wagova. She asked, Oh, is that girl on Wagovia? And like the bank is a bank here locally in Baltimore, Jen and Katie are just like rolling laughing. I’m still trying to catch up.

And I’m like, Whoa, that’s a bank. She goes, well, you know what I mean? I’m like, no, I don’t know what you meant. She’s, she meant Ozembek. I’m like, Oh my God, how do you even get there? So anyway, the two of them, we almost went off the road, but anyway, here’s where we are. But all that to say is the power of laughter and humor to just release, it’s almost like a pressure cooker. At some point you need something to release that. And Dick jokes are the way to go and stroke jokes.

Dylan Bain: Yeah, I think like, then this is why I wanted to have this conversation because I, you’re creating these unforgettable experiences. You’re talking about human connection.

And at the same time, there’s been people like I have been at a bar and had a couple of drinks and I laugh really loud. And I have a, I have a voice that projects and I’ve had people come over and be like, sir, you need to reign it in. And my thought is like, we’re at an open air brewery on the side of this mountain.

Like what, what exactly are we here for? And I feel like that’s part of what we’re missing, that everything has to be high stakes. Everything has to be serious. Everything has to be ordered. You can’t ever have fun. It’s got to be production, production, production. And like, where’s the time for the laughter in that?

Where’s the time for us to actually bond together as humans?

Mo Barrett: And you guys know this because you played the card game in Bainbridge, but part of our process is, so we read a book called How We Learn, and it talks about the spacing effect, which is cumulatively spent, if you spend time, you know, studying something, and then taking a break, and then studying something, You will spend less time on the study part instead of just powering through and you will retain more by studying less by breaking it up, right?

Katy Stevens: And by causing your brain to have to recall what you were doing. So we, when we were doing our TED talk in March, we’re really good about like kind of feeling out, okay, what do we need to be doing right now? And sometimes it’ll be like, let’s go sing. Let’s go play a game. Let’s go do something. So we were in the green room playing cards and people were like, Oh, you guys must be so like, Oh, you’re just so ready.

You’re playing cards. I’m like, no, this is what we need right now. We’re still, you know, we’ve run lines, we’ve run lines. This is letting our brains rest. So when we go to recall it, it’s better. So trying to work really smart, but enjoy every moment of the process at the same time.

Mo Barrett: Yeah. And I think to your part, like to your point about the business, I mean, a lot of times you get so caught up in how many widgets did you produce?

And we are convinced that you will produce more widgets, i. e. you will be more productive in whatever aspect of your life if you listen to yourself and you take those breaks, if we just keep going full force, you’re just going to burn out. And I think games and fun and laughter and pranks and making your brain work in a different way is a form of productivity that I think is undervalued and overlooked. So like to me, games are important because they, they exercise a different part of your brain. They bring out the competitive nature and you’re just, even though you’re not working on the thing that you’re working on, it’s going on back there.

Um, and I think people overlook that. And, and that’s another thing that’s really important to us too, is the power of play.

Dylan Bain: I love that. And I love how you’re talking about this play is not optional. If you want peak performance, you have to be able to, to be doing this type of thing. I, I’d love to shift our conversation just a little bit into talking about how do you prepare for performance?

I think people will tend to, and this is my own projection on it, will tend to look at it and say like, wow, Mo and Katie are so polished. Amazing. I had an unforgettable experience that was just easy for them. I wish I was that type of person because you make it look so effortless. What do you do to prepare to be ready to go on stage?

Mo Barrett: A lot. I will say the most important thing we do is we trust each other. Yeah. There are things that Katie’s really strong in and I’m good at bartending. So I think when you lean into each other’s strengths, but we are very deliberate about the words we choose and the order of the words that we use. And again, TEDx was a great example because Once we got our script narrowed down and there were times when I, I was like, we’re never going to get it. And she’d be like, we got this, we got this. And there was times when you’re like, we’re never going to get this. And I’m like, yeah, you’re right. But I think, but

yeah, we’re screwed, but it was interesting. Once we got the words on the paper and we got, um, final blessing from our coach that, you know, like then when Kimberly said, okay, this is the talk and we went to memorizing it, it was really interesting.

I have our whole talk in hieroglyphics, I have six pages, nine pages of pictures of pictures, clip art. And that’s how I memorized our talk. She has note cards, which office supplies are my love language. We also made a click track where we sat like in separate bedrooms, but we could see each other. And we did our talk, but recorded it into two separate channels.

Then I took it and removed the other channel. So she had all my lines with enough space for where her lines would go. She would know if she had enough time to deliver. And so she would listen to our talk, but just my part. And I would listen to our talk, just her part. There was several things.

Katy Stevens: And we, whenever we’re getting ready to get in front of people, we’ve divided into thirds.

So the first third is the writing. And I will say, I’m incredibly grateful. We do collaborate with writing, but Mo does 95 percent of the initial writing. And then we tweak, tweak, tweak. And she is a brilliant writer. She’s just so intentional about the way she uses language. It’s clever. It’s great. So she writes the base script.

We tweak it. We tweak, tweak, tweak back and forth. We share a lot of documents on our, on our devices. The next third is rehearsal. And we rehearse a lot. We rehearse a whole lot. And then no matter how we feel at the end of that two thirds, we know that it’s not going to feel complete until we’re in front of that group of people.

We always call it the final third. So feeding off of the audience, looking them in the eye, reading like what their vibe and their energy is, and playing back with them is the other third. And we always know it’s only going to feel so complete until we’re in front of a group of people. So again, just a lot of intentionality in that, in the writing, Mo does a lot of research when she writes.

Like, if we’re going to be speaking to an organization, she’s digging around for all kinds of stuff. Mo also loves Canva. So little shout out to Canva.

Mo Barrett: Well, slides and things like that. Another thing too, is we talk about the preparation part of things before TEDx. We, we actually invited another speaker who was local and we invited a bunch of, we had like 25 friends in here and we said, look, we, We’re not asking you to give any comment on our, on our script.

We don’t, we just need to give this in front of people because, you know, a lot of people just practice in front of a mirror and, and until you get that other third in there. So we did a run through of our talk and our friend Joe did a run through of his talk. And there were two really valuable things that came out of that run through that we would not have gotten had we not done our talk in front of people.

And I think that a lot of times, there is no way to be, I don’t think you can ever be overprepared. I felt we were adequately prepared because we, you know, we did Zoom calls, we were talking, we did the click track, we would go for walks and deliver our talk while we were walking, we I mean, we walked around our property here.

We live in two acres. And so we would just walk around and do it in different venues, in different environments, then do it in front of people. But that preparation, again, for whether your talk is a proposal or asking for a raise or talking to your child, I think that all of those things deserve the same treatment, of preparation, looking at the content of the words you’re going to say, rehearsing so you can hear those words in your own voice. And then there’s that final third is when you actually deliver it. But the more prep you can do, the more confident and the more prepared you are, the

Katy Stevens: more you can compensate for the things that happen that are out of your control.

That will go wrong. Yeah. Cause it’s live performance. It’s, And I, I tell my students this all the time, it’s the perfect performance is elusive. So what happens, it’s going to happen. It’s what you do with it when you’re on that stage in front of everybody. So it’s just, the process is so fun. So fulfilling. This is, you know, second act for both of us and we’re just loving it a whole lot.

Dylan Bain: I love that. That’s a little like peek behind the curtain and be like, Oh yeah, this is actually to look flawless and easy and confident is actually a lot of time in the hole, so to speak. And how do you take care of yourselves and deal with some of what I can only imagine is a lot of intimidation of like, you know, you were saying that like, we’re never going to get this.

You’re clearly redlining on the emotions here. What are you doing to help yourself through that space?

Katy Stevens: Again, there’s a lot of trust. I think going through some of the speaking engagements and the TED Talk and things like that with two people, it’s half the work in some ways and it’s twice the work in some ways.

So we do have this almost inexplicable trust in each other, which is nice. And we also do talk about, What do you need before the performance? What do you need after the performance? I’m always thinking about when should we eat so that we’re not eating right before you go on stage, but we’re not starving and some of the logistics that we’re finding our roles in all of that.

And yeah, and it’s,

Mo Barrett: it’s funny too. I get really, really quiet and we only realized this doing some live variety shows just in the past. I don’t know, a handful of months, but I get really quiet in this one over here. It gets really quiet,

Katy Stevens: but it’s eerie. I

Mo Barrett: know. I know Dylan. It’s hard to believe

Dylan Bain: it’s the calm before the storm.

Mo Barrett: I know. Watch out people. The Monado is coming loose, but no, but it took us in. Cause you’re like, you’re like, what’s wrong? How are you doing? What are you feeling? I’m like, I think this is just part of my process, you know, but the whole preparation part of it, and, and I always, I use this talk when I, when we do our long talks, but when I first got into my second aircraft, which was the Lockheed C5, it is a massive cockpit.

It’s an Air Force strategic transport aircraft, you know, and there were switches everywhere. And I thought, I’m never going to know what all these switches do. And then it wasn’t until I took time away and looked at everything individually and was able to cut the cockpit in half and then cut it in fourths and make it a manageable thing.

But I always think about that whenever I get in any kind of situation where I feel overwhelmed, like I’m never going to get it, whatever it is, I’m like, we’ve all been in situations where we start somewhere that is overwhelming and we don’t know what any of these switches or do hickeys do and then eventually we figure out and we get to that point.

It’s a matter of trusting that we’re going to get to the other side of it. But again, it’s nice having each other that we can and you know, Dylan from our circle of of master circle people is that we have each other too. And a lot of times, you know, we’re reaching out on WhatsApp or text and saying, Hey, pickles, I need help, you know, or help us pickles.

Yeah, I mean, yeah,

Dylan Bain: Simone Katie’s name for me.

Mo Barrett: I knew that was going to come out somewhere. It’s everybody’s name for Dylan. He loves it. He loves it.

Dylan Bain: Absolutely. It’s my favorite thing. Dylan Pickles Bain.

Mo Barrett: DPB, yeah, you know me.

Dylan Bain: Well, and I think that that’s really important. I had a mentor for a long time who used to say, if you’re not willing to suck, you’re not willing to succeed.

And That whole thing of like for me growing a business and a podcast and stuff. Like I remember first time I had my mic and it was like the hundred dollar Amazon mic. And I’m, I have like the script cause I didn’t want to miss anything and it’s not actually up on Lipsyn anymore. Like I took it down. I, that, those whole early podcasts, but I still have them. And I, sometimes when I’m like, man, I really suck at this. I go back and listen to like, no, no, no, no. I I’m way better now. I have a long way to go, but I’m getting there.

Mo Barrett: Yeah. But it’s kind of like the rear view mirrors in our car. What we have three rear view mirrors and then one forward looking window.

But sometimes you got to look behind and see how far you’ve come so that you can appreciate the challenges of the road ahead too. I think that’s important to look behind and listen to like, you know, Yeah, that was my B game. I thought this was it. No, no, that was like JV or frosh or, you know, bench

Katy Stevens: warmer. So one thing I love doing with my students, my voice students is I call it greatest hits. They love it. So at the end of their lesson, I’m like, all right, go back in your rep, go way, way back. Pick a song you haven’t sung in forever. They pick out a song. We sing it through and they’re amazed at how different they sound and how far they’ve come.

Because anything like this, it’s a long game and you don’t stop, see, it’s like staring at a kid and waiting for him to grow. Can you do that? No, it doesn’t work. You, you’re mom. I think I’ve seen my kids. I don’t

Dylan Bain: know what the height my girls are. I’m kind of believing that you can do that.

Katy Stevens: Yeah, I think I’ve seen my boys grow, but you’re watching your progress with milestones and using the looking back to measure how far you’ve come.

And I think that’s really important. And, you know, fast forward, where are we all going to be in a year or two growing our brands and our business? And just the fact that we get to do it together, it’s really exciting.

Dylan Bain: Yeah. Well, in that intimidation factor, I think is, is really a big part of it of like, cause I’ve looked in cockpits before and we’re like, half those knobs have got to be fake.

There’s no way

Mo Barrett: they are from Ikea. They’re just like, yeah, it’s like, it’s like the succulent that’s fake, which we all know is a fuculent and it’s the ficus in the corner that’s plastic, but yeah. So like the same thing, right? Somebody I finance, I’m happy if I find a penny on the ground, but like for me to think about spreadsheets and accounting and stuff like that, that is overwhelming to me and intimidating to me, but you not only are good at it, you appreciate it.

And you can see things that other people can’t see in the same way I could probably get in a cockpit and go, yeah, that’s a piece of shit. You know, switch. No one cares about that. But you know what I mean? Like that, that’s the whole cool thing is like she talks about circle of fists and nobody cares about that.

Oh, I do this whole music stuff. I know a whole lot. I know. Listeners, if you’d like to talk about the circle of fist, don’t talk , but I mean, call me the the cool thing. Hey, tell me you’re over 50. Text me. There we go.

Dylan Bain: It’s adorable you think that my audience is gonna call anyone

Mo Barrett: I’m sorry. I have a carrier pigeon if you wanna let him loose.

No, but I think like that’s the whole thing is that everybody’s got their strength and everybody’s got a unique perspective and where they come at from the world. And I think that’s what makes things so cool. And again, that’s one thing that we say is on paper, we could not be more different. She had no exposure to the military.

She’s married to a man who’s a heterosexual. I married to a woman who’s gay. But I mean, you look at all the ways that we are different. And none of that matters because if you focus on the few things we have in common, I think, which is something our world needs, because you focus on the human connections, because we all have a connection in some way.

We’re all dog people or, or whether it’s games or anything, you can find that connection. That’s how you relate to that person as a human and not an opponent or a competitor. We can be a collaborative environment because we all have different strengths that we can bring in.

Dylan Bain: Yeah, I love that. I love that so much.

Sitting out here in my little like box in the suburbs, I was having a conversation with one of my neighbors and he was like, well, I just feel like there’s none of us have anything in common. And I was like, Just because we don’t talk,

Katy Stevens: right?

Dylan Bain: Like, it’s because we’re not actually having interactions, we’re just kind of like, waving and be like, Hey, Chris, how’s it going? How’s Lenny?

Mo Barrett: Yeah, I’m a safe distance, yeah.

Dylan Bain: Yeah, and if you try to be like, Hey, you want to come over for a beer? Like, they’re gonna look at you like, What’s, are you selling me a, uh, Is this an MLM?

Mo Barrett: Yes, I, I need you to get three people. This is you. Pyramid. Three friends. Well, we want to come over for one of you and your daughter’s tamale making, uh, dinner. Yes.

Dylan Bain: Oh, yes. Okay. So Dylan story time. I have a friend who we met through one of our men’s groups and he lived in New York City and he was like, you know what? Fuck it. I’m done. I don’t want to live in New York City anymore. I want to be around people I trust. So he moved here to Denver. Just straight up sold everything and moved.

And well, he was originally born in China and he makes dumplings. And my daughters were saying like, well, I like to make dumplings. And you know, my wife, myself and my, our roommate all lived in Taiwan. And we were like, well, that’s really labor intensive. And she was like, no, we throw a party. And I was like, what?

He’s like, yeah, we throw a party. Don’t worry. I’ll come over. Like he comes over and like, it was this amazing, like experience of having all these people around the table, we’re all laughing. There’s music going on and we just made a ridiculous amount of dumplings. And I was like, wow. And he’s like, yeah, this is how you do it.

You get 10 people in a room, you all make dumplings, you make a quantity that you think is unreasonable. And everybody walks away with dumplings for like three months. And all I could think of was like, this is what we’re missing. The convenience of going to the store and buying frozen dumplings is actually what’s killing us.

Not because those are full of chemical crap and they are, and that’s a problem too, but because it’s easy when that used to be a communal bonding experience.

Mo Barrett: Yep. Yeah. And what you guys did with G, making the dumplings, that is an experience. That is a transaction versus transformation, right? That relational, you have all changed because of that.

Going to the store and buying something that you can throw in the microwave is a transaction. That is a nutritional and caloric transaction versus the transformative experience of making your meal and making mistakes and having the suck so that you can succeed, right? And you’ve got your young kids, that Dealing with adults and you have Americans dealing with, I mean, this, just all the different levels that make that a transformative experience.

That’s what we are about because we, and this is the relation, the thing we talk about, especially when we host trivia, because we do trivia on like anybody else I’ve ever seen it. We do because we do a lot. It’s a very Multi layer, multi sensory experience. And so we talk about people, if you’re hungry and you just want to get some calories in, you can go to the cupboard, you can grab some pretzels, you can get some ramen and, you know, nuke it or do whatever you want.

You can go to a restaurant, you can go cook your own steak, or you can go to a hibachi restaurant where you are sitting with strangers in front of a probably illegally, unsafe, heated element, or someone’s throwing around knives and making volcanoes out of onions. Throwing shrimp in your mouth. Yeah. That is an experience.

And I will always opt for the hibachi experience to get food in my belly because you’re being nourished in other ways, and you’re sharing that experience with people you may never meet again, and that’s fine. It’s just whatever that moment represents. It’s making the dumplings versus just grabbing something out of my, my cupboard. And there’s the yum yum sauce.

Katy Stevens: And I, I would like to make sure we don’t overlook that ridiculous amount of dumplings is a great band name. Hey! Hey! Hey!

Mo Barrett: It’s an Asian unit of measurement.

Katy Stevens: So like, how much does she weigh? She weighs a ridiculous amount of dumplings.

Mo Barrett: I weigh five amounts of dumplings. I need to lose one amount of dumplings.

I love you. How much? A ridiculous amount of dumplings.

Dylan Bain: Ah, I love this.

Mo Barrett: You almost did an Asian accent there. I don’t have an Asian accent. That was the other thing we did, right? So we tried to do our whole TED talk and she would shout out a, um, I was going to say something racist and that’s not what you say, but you would say like, do it like Southern or something British.

And what we realized is I cannot do accents. They all end up sounding Scottish, Scottish. So yeah, man, we, we got to wear a kilt in a balarney. That’s about how that goes. It’s a ridiculous amount of dumplings. Yeah, man.

Dylan Bain: Well, I mean, even that. Right. I think one of the things that it’s lost. I, this morning I was at my daughter’s school.

She was doing her, they call it empowerment and just a presentation doesn’t something they pick it. And then they research it and she decided that she wanted to get to know her mom’s side of the family, and my wife’s family, they’re all Lebanese, the own a city block in Peoria, Illinois, all very insular culture.

And so, you know, Harper was learning how to make kibbeh and all sorts of stuff, you know, and she’s giving this talk. And I’m sitting there and I’m like, what an amazing connection that she has. And then you also think about like, you know, one of the things she did was she went to a, this Lebanese restaurant and was like, she called them up by herself and was like, Hey, I’d like to come shadow you. And when, when they showed up, they were talking to my wife because they thought she had called and wasn’t was my oldest daughter. And, you know, we were walking out. It was a curse to me of like, we’ve lost that. We’ve lost this cultural connections and the ability to actually be able to both embrace and kind of laugh at our cultures.

People will say you brought up the R word with racism and be like, well, it’s racist if we’re doing accents and it’s like, yeah, I’ve lived overseas though. No one gives a shit. Right. Except the South Africans.

Mo Barrett: Yeah. You got to focus on what’s important.

Dylan Bain: And so like the ability to just say like, Hey, this isn’t actually the high stakes we want it to be. This is actually something that, you know, I, I’m going to turn every accent I do into Scottish cause that’s just the way it’s going to go. And now I’m going to make it into something I think is

Mo Barrett: not on purpose.

Dylan Bain: I think it’s great.

Mo Barrett: It’s just, it’s just another way. She’s special.

Dylan Bain: Fantastic.

Mo Barrett: I have to say though, Dylan, I think it’s awesome the way you guys, I know you’ve heard to it as free range parenting, but like I’ve seen some of your posts where the kids are making slime or something like that and you’re having to cut up parts of the, but the initiative that you’re teaching your kids to have is huge.

Like there’s so many kids that just hide behind their parents and some, to the parents discredit, the parents are shielding their kids from being able to make those mistakes on their own to make the calls to a restaurant and say, I want to shout at you. What a grown up thing to do. I mean, so I love, I love how you’re raising these two young ladies to be productive members of society with critical thinking skills that a lot of adults don’t have right now. So I love that.

Dylan Bain: Well, you got to stay on the bright side of life if you’re going to do that, because, great example, my wife took my daughters to First Friday, which is this art walk here in Denver, and they went to this, their favorite, their favorite thrift shop. And like the ladies who run it, they know my daughters are all excited.

And Agatha sees this fuzzy bolt of cloth. You know, and she’s like, that’s what I’m getting. That’s what I’m spending my money on. And my wife, my, my wife was like, okay, we’ll be on whatever. And I, she came home with it and I don’t go, this is a mom and daughter thing. And she comes home and I was like, Agatha, what, what is that?

And she’s like, well, it’s not what it’s going to be yet. So here I have an eight year old who saw this thing, you know, this piece of cloth wrapped around this piece of cardboard in her head she had figured out what it was going to be. And so she’s able to see this thing, but then now she has the tools.

We have sewing machines. She ended up making a gigantic fuzzy pillow. That is, it’s like her height. You know, sometimes this means that I don’t have to tell them to clear the table. And it doesn’t, it means that I don’t have to tell them to put away their clothes. And it means that they go to bed at time.

And sometimes it means that they’ve made a five gallon bucket of slime. And sometimes it means that your four foot daughter made an eight foot long body pillow out of cloth that was meant to be a curtain. Or sometimes you come downstairs and there’s a hole burnt in the carpet because they’re making melty bees and forgot to turn off the, the, the, the iron. And this is my opportunity as a parent to have a choice.

Mo Barrett: Whoopsie daisy. I can

Dylan Bain: laugh and tell them it’s perfectly fine and therefore encourage the behavior in the learning. Or I can flip out and teach them that their initiative will make Papa angry and therefore it’s not allowed. And that humor part, I’ve always really, and I have never, I haven’t always been successful, but I’ve always tried to say, I’m going to laugh first. And then figure it out later, especially with my kids.

Mo Barrett: Good. That’s good. They’re lucky. Those kids are lucky. They are. And again, you have, you have a kid, again, who can see something not for what it is, but for what it can be. And that’s a huge deal. That’s huge. That’s awesome. I love it.

Dylan Bain: Another story. When, when Agatha, my youngest was two, my mother in law was over.

And they, she said, what do you want for dinner? And they said, let’s decorate pizzas because I have girls. It’s not making pizzas. It’s decorating pizzas. And I told you we needed more glitter.

Mo Barrett: Glitter.

Dylan Bain: But so we bought all the toppings for it and Agatha was like, I said, Agatha, you’re going to be doing the olives.

She was two. She was two years old. So I sharpened one of our para knives to be razor sharp and gave it to her. And she pinched the blade and, and just started cutting all the, she cut all the olives at two years old. And my mother in law lost her mind of like, my God, you can’t give a knife to a two year old.

I was like, well, then don’t upset her. You’re like, she won’t stab you unless you give her a reason. And she’s like, she’s like, well, she’s like, well, she’s a, but she’ll cut her finger. And I was like, and then she’ll learn not to do that.

Mo Barrett: Don’t cross, Agatha.

Dylan Bain: Like that’s fine. We can do this. And to this day, like when we start this, I don’t, I no longer have, they all use, they’ve used real knives since day one.

And so it’s, it’s again, like when she did finally cut her finger, she was like freaked out and we were like, it’s okay, it’s fine. Like this is part of the learning process. That’s what

Mo Barrett: knives do. That’s why you have 10 fingers. You’ll be fine. Fine with eight,

Dylan Bain: exactly.

Mo Barrett: You look like a shop teacher. Hey,

Dylan Bain: yeah, it’s our annual joke on 4th of July fireworks day.

I still have three whole fingers from last year.

I’m back. Fantastic. Kids. Well, yeah, yeah. The kids today is in their fireworks. Well, for the audience at home that is listening is like, Oh my God. I need more Moe and Katie in my life. Where can they go to find more of your amazing work and sense of humor?

Mo Barrett: Well, first I want to say, um, thank you, mom. If you wander around Millersville, you can just follow Moe around.

Yeah, you just hear her cackling. That’s right. We don’t recommend where we currently are, which is in a closet. I came out of the closet years ago. Katie’s never been in one. Our website is unforgettable experiences.com, or you can go to Mo and Katie show.com. One O. No, E and Katie with a y. Hmm.

Unforgettable experiences. So many stipulations. Yeah. Or on social media. We’re at your unforgettable experiences.

Katy Stevens: If you’d like to watch our TED Talk, you can go on YouTube and you can put in either of our names, Mo Barrett or Katie Stevens, or you could put in how to be. Unforgettable. Unforgettable. And you’ll, we’ll hear Mo sing actually.

Not well.

Mo Barrett: That was our whole thing with the TED Talk is we wanted to disrupt monotony. So two people on stage, that’s a disruption. We sang disruption. Yep. We said the word prostitute disruption several times. Yeah. So that’s how you can find us.

Dylan Bain: Fantastic. Mo and Katie. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Katy Stevens: Thank you, Dylan. Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Dylan Bain: Thanks for listening. The conversation doesn’t stop here. You can find me on all the social media platforms at the Dylan Bain, and you can sign up to get updates on workshops, events, and more at DylanBain. com.