Friendship as Extreme Sport: An Interview with Kim Coutts

10/14/23 • 32 min

Friendship as extreme sport? If you're Kim Coutts, yes. After life threw her some curveballs, Coutts decided she needed to get brave about new relationships. And she's leaned into the challenge the way some of us would train for a triathalon or climb Mt. Whitney. In other words, all in and pushing to the limit. Hear her practical advice and what happens when you click yes to every Meetup out there.

Transcript:

Debra Hotaling (00:04):

Hello and welcome to the Dareful Project. I'm Debra Hotaling. Some people climb big mountains and some surf big waves. But my friend Kim Coutts, she makes new friends. She makes friends like a ninja warrior. She makes friends like you would prepare for a triathlon or you would climb Mount Whitney. In other words, she is all in. And she did this as a challenge to herself and her stories are amazing. So she's here with us today to talk about why she took on the challenge, how she started to make new friends, and what we can learn from this sort of extreme sport of friendship making. Kim, welcome.

Kim Coutts (00:48):

Thank you for having me. So fun.

Debra (00:50):

So all of us as we get older, I mean we used to have our kid friends. We would just hang out and play together. And then as young people and parents, we would be friends of college friends or we would be friends of our kids', friends, their parents. And now it's harder. It just feels harder. How do you find new friends? How did you get this way? How did you get started?

Kim (01:18):

I think I got divorced, and I think it's really easy to be complacent when you're living with another person. You never really hit that loneliness spot where you're like, oh my gosh, I have to do something huge to change this. But when I got divorced, I decided I would move out. I ended up all the way up in Portland sort of accidentally, and I was going through something and completely by myself, so I decided I needed to do something about it. And I dove. In my typical fashion, I have a tendency to overshoot things. I either don't do anything at all or I do too much. So I probably did more than I needed to, but I learned a lot and have kind of kept doing it. And I will say I listen to a lot of podcasts like yours, which are amazing. But I was listening to one the other day on goal setting and how we achieve goals and they really recommend that you can only achieve one goal at a time and you really need to focus on one thing and write down all the verbs of the things that are required to do it.

Kim (02:16):

So I definitely go through phases where I focus on other things, but I am back in a friend making mode right now. So it's definitely one of my top goals I'm focused on again at this time.

Debra (02:27):

And listeners are go, yeah. Yeah, we're all about friendships. I like making friends too. But I got to tell you guys, we are not even in the league of Kim. We were talking on the phone last week and this is how I got so excited about sharing this with y'all because she just started going down the meetup list. And keep me honest on this, Kim, but it sounded like you were just bringing up Meetup and just checking all the boxes. I mean all those weird things, all of those, I don't know if that's super sketchy things you were in, right?

Kim (03:00):

I am in Meetup is odd. It's a really amazing tool, but I also view it kind of online dating and it's a numbers game or a sales funnel as a lot of people might look at it. So I figure I have to join probably 20 meetup groups. I'll go to 10 or 11, I'll like five or six,...

Transcript:

Debra Hotaling (00:04):

Kim Coutts (00:48):

Thank you for having me. So fun.

Debra (00:50):

Kim (01:18):

Kim (02:16):

So I definitely go through phases where I focus on other things, but I am back in a friend making mode right now. So it's definitely one of my top goals I'm focused on again at this time.

Debra (02:27):

Kim (03:00):

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Transcription:

Debra Hotaling (00:04):

Hello and welcome to the Dareful Project. I'm Debra Hotaling. I'm really excited about our guest today. He is one of the longest serving top execs in the magazine publishing world, and I promise you that you have read and loved so many of the magazines that he's been responsible for. I mean, the list is long. Here are a few, the Oprah magazine, GQ Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Men's Health, Runner's World, and the list goes on and on. And now our guest, Michael Clinton, has lit out onto new territories. He's here with us today to talk about the trailblazing work he's doing, thinking about humans over 50. And he has a great new book. Great new book. Here it is. It's called Roar Into the Second Half of Your Life Before It's Too Late.

Michael, welcome.

Michael Clinton (00:55):

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

Debra (00:59):

So help us understand what you saw in the cultural conversation that propelled you into doing the research that you're doing, launching your new businesses, writing a book. Tell us where you came from on this.

Michael (01:15):

Well, no thank you. It's an observation that we're in the middle of what is a pretty meaningful social movement in the country. The number of people in the United States that are 50 or older is now 35% of the population. The first millennials turn 50 in seven years, which is quite astounding. If you're 50 and healthy, you have a really good chance of living to be 90 or older. And so the whole construct that we've been given, the cultural construct that was handed to us was that you're supposed to be winding down as you start moving into your fifties and sixties. And that script was written a hundred years ago when life expectancy was 62. So you basically did work till 62 and then you sort of retired for a couple of years, then you were gone. Well, today it is a radically different environment because if you are 60, pick a number and you live another 30 years, that's a lot of living that can have meaning and purpose and so forth. So how do you rethink what this is all going to mean for you individually? And it has huge implications globally because many countries are like Japan and Korea and UK and Germany, the US have very big, fast growing population is over 50. That was the aha.

Debra (02:42):

And you personally, where did you come from in all of this? Did you have a personal aha as you were moving through your career?

Michael (02:50):

Yeah, no, for sure. As you mentioned, I had a spectacular publishing career with a lot of amazing people, brands launching many magazines, buying companies, being the president and publishing director of Hearst Magazines, being the chairman of the magazine, publishers of America. I was really full. I had a really full exciting career and I was in my early sixties and I was kind of, okay, I'm kind of ready to go do my next thing and you can close out one career and move into another career or other activities. And that's what was my thought. But when I started looking...