Dr. Korey Watkins is a clinical psychologist in Austin, and he has spent more than 15 years doing work where the conversation is the whole job. In this episode, Korey and Jake talk about what it really takes to be present with another person, why silence can be the most powerful thing you say, and how to walk into a hard conversation without dreading it.

You will hear how Korey built his conversation skills on purpose, why he treats every talk as two people sharing a moment, and the simple model he created for the hardest conversations of all. Whether you are a therapist, a product leader, or a parent, the lessons here carry over to any conversation that matters.

In this episode

• How Korey learned conversation skills, and why he was not just born good at it
• The grad school habit of saying hi to strangers to build his confidence
• Why he once sat in silence with a patient for half an hour, and what she remembered most
• Conversation as relationship, not a list of questions to get answered
• How to share part of yourself while still holding clear boundaries
• A fresh way to think about conflict so you stop avoiding hard talks
• The trap of "one way is good, one way is bad," and why your style is your strength
• The CLEAR model from Korey's upcoming book, and how it works even for tough customer conversations

About the guest

Dr. Korey Watkins is a clinical psychologist based in Austin, Texas. He works at the VA, serves in the US Army Reserve, and runs a private practice on the south side of Austin. He is also writing a book called How to Tell Them, about talking to children and teens through life's hardest moments.

Find Korey here:

• Website: https://www.drkoreylwatkins.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkoreylwatkins/
  

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Master Flavorist Terry Miesle has spent thirty five years building the flavors you taste in meats, snacks, and dairy. Jake sat down with him to talk about why the hardest part of the job isn't the lab work, it's the conversation. They get into turning a vague request like "a little more orangey" into a finished flavor, building a shared language so a team stops describing the same smell five different ways, knowing when good enough is good enough, and why so much of flavor lives in memory and association rather than just your mouth. If you build products or lead a team, the work will sound familiar.

Terry is on the North American savory flavor team at Sensient: https://sensientflavorsandextracts.com/.

You can find him on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/terrymiesle/

Find out more about Jake and the Conversation Compass at: https://jakemckee.com/

Signup for Conversation Lab event: https://jakemckee.com/conversationlab

The customer's actual words and daily reality are often lost in translation on product teams. In Episode 12, host Jake McKee talks with UX and AI design consultant Erik Summa (formerly of Dell), whose job is to bring the absent user into the room and keep them there.1

The central question: What happens to that essential user-focused work when AI speeds up development so much that teams skip past the step of truly understanding who they're building for?1

Listen as Erik explains why the value of a project was never in its speed, but in the human connection. We dive into topics like "vibe coding," talking to AI in the car, and the irreplaceable human moment of an older patient whose call to the dentist might be their only real conversation all week. Ultimately, you must speed up the parts of a project that can be rushed so you can slow down on the parts that can't—and the one part that can never be rushed is understanding who you are building for.

For more information about the Conversation Compass, head to https://jakemckee.com/

And if you'd like to signup for Conversation Lab, you can at: https://jakemckee.com/conversationlab