What we talked about
Kirk Welsh is a licensed architect turned entrepreneur and coach based in Detroit. After more than 12 years in architecture and over $150 million in constructed projects, he walked away from corporate life to build HouseWarming, a commercial flooring company, and then went deeper to create the Architect of Alignment, a framework that helps high-performing professionals build the internal structure they need before chasing external success.
Show notes
Kirk Welsh knew he had to leave corporate architecture during a four-hour meeting held on his son’s first birthday, in the middle of a $40 million school project he could not own, for the same Detroit Public Schools system he had grown up in. The pain of staying eventually outgrew the risk of leaving, and what came next became the Architect of Alignment, a framework for building the internal structure that has to exist before any business plan works.
What we covered
- The exact moment Kirk knew he had to leave, a four-hour meeting on his son’s first birthday during a $40 million school project, and how the pain of staying became greater than the risk of leaving.
- What he wishes someone had told him about the gap between deciding to go and actually being ready, and why he now builds a six-to-twelve-month bridge for the people he coaches so they can leave corporate without burning their lives down.
- The five areas that have to be aligned before any business plan works: Spiritual, Mental, Physical, Financial, and Relational, and why internal alignment is non-negotiable for founders.
- The difference between an employee mindset and an owner mindset, and how that shift shows up in the daily decisions of high performers.
- Detours into teaching at the University of Detroit Mercy, completing a master’s degree in Spanish at the University of Puerto Rico, and learning the language from an eight-year-old at a laundromat.
- The daily habits that quietly compound into a different decade, and his message for anyone who has decided to leave but is still waiting for the right moment.
About Kirk
Kirk Welsh is a licensed architect, founder of HouseWarming, and the creator of the Architect of Alignment coaching framework. Based in Detroit, he spent more than 12 years in architecture overseeing over $150 million in constructed projects before building his own companies, and serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Detroit Mercy.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirkwelsh-81383428
- Website: https://meethousewarming.com
Episode 155 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:01) Welcome back to the pre-vetted podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Today I am joined by Kirk Welsh. He’s a licensed architect who managed over 150 million in constructed projects before walking away from a corporate career to build something of his own. Kirk founded Housewarming, a commercial flooring company based in Detroit.
and through that journey discovered his true calling, helping high performing professionals make the transition from corporate life to entrepreneurship without unnecessary risks. He called himself the architect of alignment and he worked with people who have already made the decision to live but need a structure to do it right. Kirk, welcome to the show.
Kirk Welsh (00:54) Thank for having me. It’s always a pleasure.
Federico Ramallo (00:59) I’m honored to have you here today. So for people meeting you for the first time, can you tell us a bit more about what do you do today?
Kirk Welsh (01:10) Yeah, for sure. So just as you had mentioned, I’m Kirk Welsh. I started out as a licensed architect practicing for over a decade and a half and realized that over a decade and a half, I had put the ladder up against the wrong side of the house. I got up to the top of the corporate ladder, got licensed, went through the entire process and realized that there wasn’t the thing that was called in my heart. It was actually something bigger.
And I was in a box in corporate that at one point in time, I couldn’t ignore anymore. And I had to break out of the box. And from there, you know, I was always called to do entrepreneurship and give back in such a very impactful way. So I built my own flooring company from that, grew that really quickly over 18 months. And after that, I realized that I still wasn’t satisfied. There was something else that I was not giving. And what I realized is I wasn’t
living out my full potential and giving to others and create impact. were moments in my life where there was true impact. And I realized I wasn’t getting that. I was not getting that in architecture. I was not getting that in the flooring company. And that’s when I discovered, you know, I’m truly called to help others in their process of internal alignment. And that’s when I created the Architective Alignment Platform, which is
There’s a multitude of things, what we do currently is we help individuals, high performing professionals build the internal structure before they reach external success in life.
Federico Ramallo (02:49) Right, right. I think it’s very interesting what you’re doing and it’s
visible group of people and there is not a lot of people talking about this particular subject.
Kirk Welsh (03:03) Thank you. Yeah, that means a lot. I feel like it’s the most important thing to talk about because, you know, getting external success, you know, whether it be the car, the money, all of those things, it’s sort of scientific. can you can figure out, figure it out after some time. But, you know, we hear about a lot of individuals that don’t have the internal alignment. They still they’re still not fulfilled in whatever they do in life. And I feel that there are many ambitious people.
but there’s no system for themselves. There’s no internal operating system to help them to determine what is success for them internally. And from me and from my experience, that is what has helped me to have full fulfillment in life is getting my things together internally. So without internal alignment, external success becomes unstable from what I believe.
Federico Ramallo (03:57) Right, right. And also it becomes unbearable, right? Because if you get into the rat race, you know, and you are unhappy through the process, then the, you know, the bigger house, the bigger car, you know, rather than something you can enjoy becomes a burden that you can carry over. And you don’t realize it.
Kirk Welsh (04:20) Yeah,
yeah, for sure, for sure. You talked about that in your book a lot, which I told you that I enjoy it for sure, but I don’t wanna spoil the things that are coming out for you, but you got some good stuff coming.
Federico Ramallo (04:27) Right.
Yeah, thank you, thank you. Yeah, I truly appreciate you saying that about the book. It’s something that I’ve been working on and it’s almost ready to be published. And I’m super excited about that, And it shares a lot of my personal stories and a lot of the realizations I do throughout that journey, right?
Kirk Welsh (04:53) Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Federico Ramallo (04:55) Yeah. And as you mentioned, it’s a, you you, come to realizations when you, when you see, you know, you’re in front of them and you, and you realize it, it’s, cannot unsee and see it anymore. And the more I talk with people about my experiences, the more I realize that a lot of people had had had similar experiences, you know, different contexts with similar experiences. So I, I find that reassuring that the book will help.
a lot of people as well.
Kirk Welsh (05:23) Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
Federico Ramallo (05:27) So what was the moment you realized you wanted to leave corporate and build something of your own? Can you tell us a little bit more about how was that aha moment?
Kirk Welsh (05:39) Yeah, and it gives me chills to even get that question asked because it puts me right back in that place and time, which I’m super appreciative of and grateful for that moment. But I’m more so grateful that I had the awareness in that moment to understand what was going on. But if I can take you back, when I was working at corporate, working the architecture job, I was at head of a $40 million project, which was
an extremely important project for the community because it was building a school from the school system I actually came from. So I came from Detroit Public Schools and I was the only one in the room that could be an advocate really for what it was like to be a student in that school. So it was like a full circle moment for me. But I was sitting in this meeting and it was a four hour meeting and it was on my son’s first birthday.
And I realized the moment that I should have been celebrating my son, couldn’t fully be in the moment because I was at the, my time was at the expense of doing a project for someone else. And I realized that this was a project that I did not own, that I couldn’t leave to him. It was a project that I had no ownership of. And it was a project that I really had to the time freedom.
And I sat in that meeting and I thought to myself, what am I doing here? And that was the moment that I realized that something was off and something needed to change and that it was misalignment there. But that wasn’t the moment that things started to change for me. That’s the moment that I realized that the change needed to happen. And that’s totally different than the execution of you changing something.
Federico Ramallo (07:27) Yeah, I think that first is having the awareness and the realization. Because after that, after you have that clarity, then everything that unfolds makes sense. Right? But if you don’t have that clarity, you’re struggling and you don’t know with what.
Kirk Welsh (07:49) Yeah, yeah. I just knew at that moment, like I was struggling internally. I was externally successful. I had the career. I had the stable money. I was able to take care of the family and things like that. But internally I was off and there was this tension where the external success without the ownership created like an internal tension. And I didn’t have ownership of my time. The basic human freedom.
I didn’t have ownership of my time. I didn’t have ownership of the project, obviously. And I didn’t have ownership of how I could spend my day that day and celebrate. And that was the moment I stopped lying to myself. I stopped lying to myself. that day changed the rest of my life, that moment of realization.
Federico Ramallo (08:34) Right, right. Let me share a little story that I don’t think it’s in the book, but it should. It’s my moment of realization. I mean, I was in corporate for two or three years at Microsoft when I was 16 and joined. I left three, four years later and I didn’t take any vacation throughout any of those years because I was so hooked up by the work. It was so interesting and amazing and you know.
Kirk Welsh (08:38) Please.
Federico Ramallo (09:01) And the thing is that after that, I was pushed to take vacations. It’s like, you got to take vacations, right? You have accrued so much vacations that you have to take some time off, right? So I understand where they were coming from, but I was so hooked up by the work that I didn’t want to, right? Eventually they insisted, so it was, okay, I will take some vacation off, some time off, So was during that vacation.
I think it was like two weeks that I took off. We went to the beach in Buenos Aires. Everybody goes to the beach during summer, right? You have like two weeks of summer that you can enjoy the beach. Otherwise it’s too cold, right? So, you know, people go to the beach. So we went to the beach. I went with some friends and I remember staying alone on the beach, just thinking about, you know, this nagging.
Kirk Welsh (09:29) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (09:52) thing that was bothering me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was, right? Eventually, I realized that it was, you know, after a few years, right? But the I reached a plateau professionally because I couldn’t go to consulting because I was too young. And what I was doing was pre-sale. I couldn’t everything that I was building was prototypes. So what is it?
Kirk Welsh (09:56) Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (10:17) purpose of building a prototype if nobody’s going to use it, right? So I had that lack of purpose, right? It’s similar to what you were describing. So no purpose, plateau, then what is the point of me being here, right? And I could have gone to another Microsoft partners, but I felt it was like a step down, right? And it’s like, I want to go up, I don’t want to go down, right? So…
Kirk Welsh (10:40) Thank
Federico Ramallo (10:45) Maybe it was a better, professionally maybe we would have been better. don’t know, but well, that was my perception. So I left Microsoft. My boss couldn’t believe it because he knew that I was super engaged on the work. So I went from a hundred percent to, sorry, I have to go, right? And he tried to convince me to stay because there was so much potential if I stayed, right? But, and it went.
Kirk Welsh (10:55) Mm-hmm.
you
All
Federico Ramallo (11:13) all 180 degrees all the way around and it was an amazing experience, an amazing adventure I had after I left, that I wouldn’t change it for the worse.
Kirk Welsh (11:21) Mm-hmm.
Yeah, but it was important for you to have that experience to be able to justify and to solidify that tension that you felt on the beach that one day.
Federico Ramallo (11:34) Yes, yes. And it all started with having that realization moment because after that you see everything different.
Kirk Welsh (11:43) Yeah, totally.
Federico Ramallo (11:46) So a lot of people think about living but never do. What made you actually take the leap? Or what do you think makes people actually take the leap?
Kirk Welsh (11:58) What made me take the leap, and I believe I heard it in your story too, and I see it with other individuals is, is really the pain of staying becomes greater than the risk of leaving. So there’s this internal negotiation that you do with yourself whenever you make any decision in life. If you want to make a big purchase or something, you think to yourself, do I really need that?
or do I really want it? And most of the time our wants, our wants and our emotions take over logically. But in this situation, was, I can say it was the emotions, it was the pain that I felt of remaining there and continuing to build someone else’s dream, which I have no problem with, but building someone else’s dream and to not have anything for myself or to leave anything for.
my son was the moment that it was just so hard to actually bear that when I searched in the back of my mind and thought through that narrative, you know? And I realized that clarity comes when you stop tolerating what you know is wrong. And I knew it was wrong internally. So I could sit there and ignore what my spirit was calling me to do out of fear.
or I could take the chance and it just became so difficult that I couldn’t bear it anymore.
Federico Ramallo (13:25) Right, right. what I would suggest to anybody that is thinking of leaving is to not wait until that pain is so unbearable. Because if you make the leap at that point, you’re reacting without a plan. And I’ve seen executives struggle so much for so many years after that.
Kirk Welsh (13:37) Yeah.
yeah.
Federico Ramallo (13:48) I tell people the best time to find a job is when you have a job. And I think the same thing here. It’s like, you have the moment of clarity or you’re thinking about it. Just reach out to you and figure out what it looks like on the other side. At least being able to.
Kirk Welsh (13:54) Yeah, amen.
Federico Ramallo (14:13) understand and research before making any rash decision.
Kirk Welsh (14:18) Yeah, and I was that I can break down what you said in a multitude of ways, but you said a few important things there. And one, you you feel the misalignment, but, you know, alignment, it requires action and not just intention because you can have intention. You can have a feeling. But in order to actually redirect that misalignment, you have to put action behind that.
And part of that action, you know, there’s a multitude of ways you can go about that. You can just jump out there and burn everything down and risk it all. Or you can properly prepare and plan your escape. And that’s always the best method to do it. And when I work with individuals today, we build the bridge to help them go from employment to entrepreneurship, but over.
six to 12 months, not over a month or two weeks. We properly sit down and plan that so you know and you feel extremely confident and prepared when you do decide to do that. But all that takes action and the action there is you just reaching out to someone who’s actually done it before that can walk you through the proper steps and process and teach and show you their experience as well.
Federico Ramallo (15:39) Right, adding to what you said, the pain becomes much more bearable once you have your purpose.
Kirk Welsh (15:48) yeah. yeah. Totally, totally. Yeah, because when I work with individuals or professionals, sometimes they want to get right into the execution piece. But the program is split up into three different blocks. And the first block is internal alignment. Totally. have to you have to step into the identity of an entrepreneur because and that’s
tied to your purpose because things are gonna get tough, things are gonna get rough. But if you have the identity of an entrepreneur, hey, I’m an entrepreneur, this is for me and my purpose is this, I just don’t have the structure. It makes it much easier. And you have way more tenacity to take you throughout the entire process as opposed to.
trying to focus on all the external things without having an internal alignment of entrepreneurship and purpose.
Federico Ramallo (16:47) Right, right. And the other thing I learned through this process is that if you make the decision, I mean, when I left, I was young, I didn’t have a family to support, so I could make, and this is a mental process that I did. I realized I was in that situation. I have some money saved up. So I had enough buffer to make the decision without actually affecting my…
supporting the family, right? Because the issue is that if you do the jump without that plan, without knowing how to execute as an entrepreneur, then you have the added pressure to learn how to become an entrepreneur. And now the lack of stable income that adds to the stress of the situation,
Kirk Welsh (17:15) yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah. That’s why my background in architecture has really helped with that conceptually. Because if you don’t build the structure to whatever beautiful design you put together, it’s going to fall down and collapse. it’s a catastrophe that can happen. So what you’re describing is the catastrophe that happens. It looks beautiful. The freedom looks good.
time freedom and all these other things, but if all your structure, because everyone’s situation is different, if your structure is not together, it’s gonna start to collapse, collapse, collapse, collapse, and fall down and burn everything down before you can actually have time catch up with what you need to be doing and your purpose for sure.
Federico Ramallo (18:28) Having an exit plan, it’s important because it’s a service for the executive, for their family and their future.
Kirk Welsh (18:36) Because misalignment is not in one area, it’s in all areas. Like if one area falls apart, then everything else collapses. It’s all intertwined. You can’t build a strong business with a weak mind or unstable habits. So if you want to get into entrepreneurship, that tells you right there that you have to work on yourself first and foremost, because anything and everything you do
outside or within the business or within yourself, going to, it’s gonna show in the operations of the business or how you show up as a leader. And life operates as a system, not as categories. So when you talk about those five different aspects, a strong body, a strong mind, strong spirit in terms of purpose, strong relationships around you to help you when things get tough and rough because things are built as a team, you know, and
And financially, you have to have your finances together to be able to run a lucrative business. When any of those things are off, it affects other areas of life and fragmentation often creates failure. So that’s why, you know, you have to have all of those areas together. And those are the five core areas that I realized in my journey in entrepreneurship were important for me to have together.
to build my successful and lucrative businesses that I have.
Federico Ramallo (20:07) Right, right. I completely agree. I think that part of the underlying situation is that when you have a corporate job, you have a structure that allow you to operate within the structure. On the financial, you’re mostly not paying taxes. mean, you are, but in the US, you have a split, but…
Kirk Welsh (20:19) Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (20:30) But most of the, at least in Latin America, all the 100 % of the taxes burden is being covered by the employer. So the employee gets the money and that’s it. So it’s a different. But philosophically, you just do your finances. Now you have to do your finances and the company finances. It’s an additional layer of complexity. And the same with the structure, having the structure work.
Kirk Welsh (20:38) Right.
Federico Ramallo (20:55) the hours, the people that guides you. Now you become an entrepreneur, you have no bounds and that could become very risky, very unstable.
Kirk Welsh (21:08) yeah, yeah. It makes me think about just architecture in general. And I think the constraints of different sites and architecture helped for a better product. So, you know, in architecture school, you may design a building or something and have nothing around you, design it in a vacuum. So.
You know, how tall you make it, how beautiful you make it, what colors you make it, it does not affect anything around it. But life is not like that. And with that, because there were no constraints, you get all of these things that just made no sense. And it was actually dangerous. We had to actually have constraints to actually design something that was meaningful and purposeful and all these other things.
So I think of that same thing when I think of architecture and entrepreneurship. When I got in real life and I started designing buildings because there was a park next door and there were children in the school because you didn’t want to block the site of a adjacent building, that made for some very purposeful moves and some creative solutions to the constraints that you had.
Entrepreneurship is the same way. Like, it feels good to think about it in theory. I have all 24 hours to figure out, but you have no clue. If you had 24 hours to figure out, you probably would not do many meaningful things or make much progress or your business will go out of business because you have no constraints. So that’s why internal alignment is super important because you have to understand
Your nine to five is blocked out if you have a nine to five. And your five to nine before and after is your freedom time. But now you get all 24 hours to figure out and what are you gonna do because you have to figure that out to make sure you have a lucrative business and a meaningful life.
Federico Ramallo (23:14) So following the idea of architecture, what we’re trying to say is that when you have a corporate job, the job is a structure. When you’re an entrepreneur, become, you have to become the structure.
Kirk Welsh (23:28) Yep, absolutely. Well said, well said.
Federico Ramallo (23:33) Amazing, amazing. I think this is very interesting conversation. So who is the person you most want to help? And what does that professional look like when they first come to you?
Kirk Welsh (23:50) Yeah, so the individual that I mostly and want to help is right now the high performing professionals who are externally successful like I was that had the title, the years, the credentials and all of those things, but internally scattered. So you don’t have the system. You’re completely convicted.
internally knowing that there’s more for you out here that you want to build a business because I’m not in the business of convincing anybody into entrepreneurship. I can only help you. So they’ve mastered someone else’s system and they don’t have one of their own. They don’t, like you had mentioned, they have a structure that corporate put on them, but they need to master their internal because success without ownership
creates frustration and the way you get success is the way you put in and you provide structure and ownership to yourself internally before you could succeed externally. These individuals, they don’t need more ambition. They actually just need structure to help them to go from employment over to entrepreneurship. So I help you create the structure and the bridge over between the two.
Federico Ramallo (25:09) But what is the most common mistake you see people make when they transition from corporate to entrepreneurship?
Kirk Welsh (25:16) They
It’s internally. So they bring the employees, the habits of an employee over into ownership. And those are two different sort of habits and roles and internal identities. Most of the time when you’re an employee, you wait for direction instead of creating, you know, the structure. So it’s like,
hey, what do I do or what do I need to do next? You’re looking for someone to tell you what to do next, but as an entrepreneur, you have to have some self-governance and you have to be able to know what is the goal and what is the most efficient way to get to the goal and you have to create a plan because your plan is gonna show you how to get there, but there’s gonna be so many things that throw you off throughout the journey.
So that self-governance is super important for you. And no one is coming to organize your life and is coming to save you. So bringing those employee habits and mindsets over to entrepreneurship is actually destructive because you’re not able to push things forward and get closer to your purpose and your goals if you.
still have the same habits that you had before.
Federico Ramallo (26:34) Yeah, I completely understand what you’re talking about.
Kirk Welsh (26:37) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (26:41) So you also teach architecture, right? At the University of Detroit Mercy.
Kirk Welsh (26:47) Yeah, yeah, I do. I do.
Federico Ramallo (26:50) How does teaching shape how you think about your own work?
Kirk Welsh (26:57) And probably if you notice right there, I lit up a little bit because I love teaching and teaching for me was one of those impactful things that taught me that I was not doing, not necessarily doing the right thing in architecture, but that there was more for me. So I love to impart wisdom and knowledge and help others and
drive impact in that way. So what teaching has taught me is it’s taught me clarity because you know when you’re so when you have experience in a career or you have experience around a certain environment you start to speak in these different words and you you start to speak too highly and not necessarily communicate yourself well so what teaching
taught me was you can’t teach without understanding something deeply yourself. Teaching exposed my gaps in thinking because I may think through a certain solution or problem, but that’s not the way in which I wasn’t communicating as clearly. And it helped me to refine my thoughts by having to communicate it and teach it to another person because clarity is built through explanation. It’s not.
built through, it’s built through explanation and showing, it’s not built through just talking. So teaching has really forced me to be crystal clear on my communication, my thoughts and my processes for sure.
Federico Ramallo (28:28) Right. Right. I believe that if somebody cannot explain something, even complicated, but cannot explain it to a young kid, right, cannot distill it to something so simplistic that a kid can understand, then they don’t fully understand the concept, right? Because that exercise requires a deep, knowledge and being able to
Kirk Welsh (28:39) and
Federico Ramallo (28:52) articulate it in a way that a kid can understand. And then you can go there on different stages, right? The same thing happens with the students, right? You have so much knowledge of architecture that you have to distill it in a way that a new student can understand what you’re talking about. And then being able to accompany that student towards the more complex subjects, right?
Kirk Welsh (29:14) yeah, yeah, that makes me think about a time in Puerto Rico. So when I first, I lived in Puerto Rico for a number of years. And when I first got to Puerto Rico, I could not speak Spanish. And it was a kid. It was a young kid. I think he was about eight years old. And he taught me. He taught me with so much clarity where my gaps were with thinking he was.
I appreciate him so much. can still remember his face. I can’t remember his name. But I got dropped off at a laundromat by my roommate. He was from Peru and he spoke no English. So he dropped me off at a laundromat and he was like, you know, just go get your clothes washed there. And when I pulled up to the laundromat, it was in the middle of a neighborhood and it was a guy, older gentleman.
He didn’t speak English at all either. And he got super frustrated with me because he was thinking, this guy came to my country, he came to my neighborhood and he’s trying to speak English to me and he’s coming to use my laundry mat. So he got super frustrated, I can tell by just his gestures and he called over a little boy that was eight years old. And the eight year old boy, helped me out so much. I was talking to him.
And he was like, hey, you can wash your clothes here. You have to get the quarters here and things like that. He was just helping me out. he was like, speak Spanish to me. I want to help you. So I started speaking Spanish to him. He was like, yeah, Kirk, your Spanish is really bad. What you should do is you should watch cartoons because cartoons will help you because the language is way more elementary and it’s slower.
and it’s more clear, it’ll help you to learn Spanish. And that moment really helped me a lot because I went home and started watching cartoons and that’s how I started to slowly but surely learn Spanish. And it really broke it down to me. So when we talk about clarity and being able to explain things, a lot of times it does not come from the top, it comes from the bottom and being able to take things a fundamental elementary level.
and to build up from there as opposed to trying to teach from the top down. It’s better to bottom up.
Federico Ramallo (31:30) It’s amazing that that little tip that makes a whole different, right? I don’t know if you know this, in Latin America, and particularly in Mexico, there is a Japanese cartoon that they make their own, you know, the voice actors that did the Spanish translation, people created a cult following for them.
Kirk Welsh (31:35) Yeah, sure.
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (31:57) Right? Because they, rather than just a translation, they did an adaptation. So they changed the, names of the characters, how they speak and things like that. And, you know, it became a huge thing and everybody, know, this, these conventions get packed with people and they love to talk with the voice actors because from their perspective, characters and the voice, you know,
Kirk Welsh (31:57) Really?
Mm.
Federico Ramallo (32:25) They are the characters, right? And if you hear it in Japanese, you know, it’s completely different, right? It doesn’t have that connection with people, right? And the same thing happened with the Simpsons translators, right? They added a lot of jokes that don’t translate to English, right? So the same thing, you people…
Kirk Welsh (32:27) Is this?
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Federico Ramallo (32:52) have that connection with The Simpsons because of the actors were able to make some adaptations on the jokes, right? Things that wouldn’t make sense in English, but make sense in Spanish and people love it, right? And yeah, as you said, they’re using a… So in the 90s, the Spanish spoken on those cartoons was a universal Spanish.
Kirk Welsh (33:05) huh.
Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (33:18) that nobody talked. It was just on the TVs, on the cartoons and the movies and whatnot. It was this neutral Spanish so it could cover all Latin America with all the differences and nuances. And it was a very elegant and clear language that you could understand. And in the cartoons, the subset of words are much smaller.
Kirk Welsh (33:20) Yep.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (33:44) I understand that logic and it makes a lot of sense, yes.
Kirk Welsh (33:47) For sure, for sure, most definitely.
Federico Ramallo (33:50) Yeah, and also the context, know, watching cartoons is easier than just going through classes and yeah, I can see that happening. Yeah. And in Puerto Rico, you also studied your master’s degree, right?
Kirk Welsh (33:58) Totally, totally, totally, totally. Yeah.
Yes.
Federico Ramallo (34:08) That was after you learned Spanish.
Kirk Welsh (34:11) No, it was simultaneously. yeah, what happened was I was, I standing, was working at an architecture firm, this was early on in my career. And I got invited to a wedding in Puerto Rico. And the wedding was like, it was like for, I was there for maybe four days, if I can remember. Went back to Michigan and I just fell in love with the place. I was like, I love the place.
Federico Ramallo (34:14) wow.
Kirk Welsh (34:39) And I looked on a list of accredited programs to do a master’s program in architecture. seen La Universidad de Puerto Rico. seen the University of Puerto Rico. And I was like, here’s fate. I applied there. I got in and I dropped everything. So I did not know any Spanish, walked in the classroom. I thought that part of it was in English, but it was all in Spanish. And I had a few classmates that spoke some English. And I was like, hey, I’m here. I’m stuck.
It is what it is and I made it through. So I did an entire master’s program in Spanish for architecture in Puerto Rico.
Federico Ramallo (35:14) Wow.
I mean, that is making big whoopsie into a big achievement, right?
Kirk Welsh (35:25) Yeah, it was was a bit calculated because I was like, hey, I can go here, go to school, then I can open up my market and open up everything to places where they speak Spanish, too. But I did not know that it was sort of fully immersed. thought that maybe it was like, OK, partly. But it was a whole thing because everything was in Spanish. It was a whole thing.
Federico Ramallo (35:26) You
Kirk Welsh (35:50) And it was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life. And obviously it’s opened me up to different places where they speak English and Spanish and it was a long-term play.
Federico Ramallo (36:02) Right, right, that’s amazing.
Kirk Welsh (36:03) Yeah.
Thank you.
Federico Ramallo (36:06) So going back to the topic of alignment, can you tell us what it actually feels like when someone achieves it? And how do you know when a client has crossed that threshold?
Kirk Welsh (36:20) Yeah. So alignment, when you’ve achieved it, it feels like two things. It’s twofold. It feels like clarity and consistency. So clarity, meaning you know exactly where you’re going and what the North Star is, what you’re trying to achieve. And your North Star is different for whatever you’re trying to do. Say you’re trying to…
get to Puerto Rico, or you’re trying to build a business or whatever you’re trying to do is clear in terms of what you are trying to reach the target. And then I say the consistency piece is once you actually try to move further towards it or further away from where you are, but closer towards the actual goal, it’s consistent in your efforts.
So whenever you have a goal, your habits and your actions have to align to that. So I’m training for a marathon right now. And that’s the clarity piece for me. And then the consistency is the thing that I’m doing every day. I’m watching and tracking my diet. I’m listening to my coach in terms of following her plan for me on how many miles I need to run a week.
what is the thing that I need to be doing. I’m doing that consistently. So I’m in total alignment because decisions become easier or decisions become simpler, not easier when you’re in alignment. And alignment removes that internal conflict that you have. if I know that I’m moving towards the marathon and I’m training every day, but then I start to eat burgers and fries and things like that, I’m going to have this internal conflict.
And that is the misalignment. So when you have clarity on where you’re going and you have consistency in terms of your habits and you stop negotiating with yourself, that’s when you know you are living in alignment.
Federico Ramallo (38:22) Wow, that’s amazing. Yeah, I think that you can get into these negative cycles of trying to achieve something with an internal conflict, then you get frustrated, and it keeps getting worse and worse. And what you’re describing as alignment, it’s more of a positive reinforcement. Because now you can achieve something, and then you feel, OK, I can do more. I can, you know.
Kirk Welsh (38:33) Yep.
Federico Ramallo (38:50) I can achieve more and everything you’re doing adds to either your immediate satisfaction or adds towards the feeling that you are fulfilling your purpose.
Kirk Welsh (39:04) Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, and that’s important when it comes to business because especially when you first started in business, you’re going to hear so many no’s, no’s, no, no, no, no, no. If you know that you want to build a successful or lucrative business and you develop the habits, the inputs, you cannot control the outcome. You cannot control.
someone exchanging money with you. cannot control whether someone woke up in a good mood and they want the solution that you provide. But what you can control is your inputs. And you have to focus on those things and you have to have that dialed in. There’s a specific set of things that I do every morning, regardless of where things are at or what’s going on.
And it’s attached to my daily habits and it’s attached to the business. And a part of those daily things are I spend 90 minutes just having conversations with people because conversations help to generate revenue and build relationships and things like that. And I may not get sales or a sale when I’m not focused on the sales, I’m focused on the inputs of the relationships that I’m building. And so many opportunities, speaking engagements come from that, so many opportunities to serve.
people that want to work with me, coaching clients, everything comes from that. But it starts with the daily inputs of me doing that thing consistently and not focusing on the outcome, only focusing on the inputs.
Federico Ramallo (40:42) which is what you can control.
Kirk Welsh (40:45) Yeah, that’s what you can control. And that’s what you have to have together in terms of your internal alignment, for sure.
Federico Ramallo (40:54) And what advice would you give to someone who has already decided to leave but still waiting for the right moment?
Kirk Welsh (41:06) waiting on the right moment. I love that.
Federico Ramallo (41:09) Yeah
Kirk Welsh (41:10) You’re not righting on the right time. You’re just avoiding the decision.
You know that you have to go. You are avoiding it. You are delaying it. For me, the longer I delayed, then the longer the internal tension happened for me. know? Clarity requires commitment. You have to commit to the thing that you want to achieve. You have to burn the boat.
So you’re not waiting on the right time. You’re just avoiding the inevitable. And the longer you wait, the more you reinforce your doubt. Don’t doubt yourself. Your internal alignment and your compass is directing you towards the path that you need to go. You just have to make the decision to go.
Federico Ramallo (42:01) Right.
There is a, I don’t remember the study, but there is a study that talks about happiness and how unhappiness is directly connected to how we relive our lives, you know.
Kirk Welsh (42:15) Mm. Talk.
Federico Ramallo (42:17) you know, relieving the conversation, know, we had a conversation, you know, and should I say, I should have said this, I should have said, I shouldn’t have said this, you know, like relieving and self doubting of oneself, right? Or relieving a moment, you know, I should have said this, I should have said that, you know, which could be true, right? I’m not saying they’re not, but if you focus too much on relieving those moments rather than looking forward.
Kirk Welsh (42:26) you
Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (42:46) you’re getting into a towards an unhappy path. Right. And the more you do that, the more unhappy you become. Right. And now that I’m hearing you talking about this advice that came to my mind is this idea of living on this edge of doubt that neither you’re moving forward, neither you’re moving backwards. You’re kind of regurgitating yourself towards the situation.
that is a destructive path that leads to nowhere, or leads to unhappiness.
Kirk Welsh (43:19) Totally. That’s so connected to a book that I just got finished reading. I’m real big into reading books. And it’s this book, Gradually Then Suddenly by Mark Batterson. And in the book, he talks about that. He talks about how your past is important, but it is not important. It’s important because you should look back at it for data, you know, on where you came from.
where you were, how far you’ve, what you’ve accomplished today and tomorrow in terms of gratitude. But you should not look back on it in terms of regret. I should have changed this. I should have done that. These should’ve’s, should’ve, could’ve, would’ve’s. So yeah, so yeah, I would recommend anybody that is searching for a new book in there, struggling with, you know, looking back at the past and things like that, they should definitely pick up.
Federico Ramallo (44:01) Right.
Kirk Welsh (44:14) gradually then suddenly by Mark Batterson and it talks about how life is just set of all these slow gradual consistent long-term long obedience long vision moves that you just put in each day and then suddenly your breakthrough comes but it came as a result of you doing all of those gradual moves looking back at the past in terms of data
but not looking back at the past in terms of regret and just keep pressing forward gradually until your breakthrough comes suddenly.
Federico Ramallo (44:50) Right, right. I completely agree. I think that we are who we are because of the accumulated experiences that we had. So, and that defines our path forward because the decisions, you know, we’re going to do now in a situation, it is defined by all of our experiences. And what is actually an experience, all of our experiences is
Kirk Welsh (45:00) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (45:16) all the mistakes that we made and what we learned about it. So if we look at it like that, if we look at it as our experiences is what allow us to not make mistakes in the future, then I agree, we can review it as data points. But going back and just keeping reviving and…
Kirk Welsh (45:19) Yes.
For sure.
Federico Ramallo (45:38) it’s unhealthy.
Kirk Welsh (45:42) Absolutely, wasted time.
Federico Ramallo (45:44) Yes, completely agree. And the other thing that I like about what we talk about is this idea of going back to purpose. Because after you find purpose, you have the clarity on what is your purpose, which is unique for everyone, right? Then everything else falls behind, and that’s how you build the alignment that you’re talking about.
Kirk Welsh (46:00) Hmm?
For sure, for sure, absolutely. You have to define what your purpose is. You have to spend time doing that. And most people feel like it is a waste of time, but it’s not because if you want to go to, if I want to go to Argentina, I need to know how to get there. You I need to, if you would never get on a plane with a pilot that just said, we’re going to figure out how to get there. You know, you have to know your destination.
And then from there becomes the daily habits that lead up to you reaching that destination. Because where you are now is a result of the things that you’ve done the last decade. And if you want to understand exactly where you’re going in the next decade, look at the habits that you do daily today. It’s going to tell you exactly where you’re going. You want…
me to show you your future, you show me your daily habits and I’ll tell you exactly where you’re Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (47:05) Amazing
Kirk, we’re running out of time. I truly appreciate you being here today Any final remarks before we wrap it up?
Kirk Welsh (47:17) I would just wrap it up by saying before you reach external success, internal alignment is extremely important to focus on. And if you need someone to help you in that space, I mostly help young professionals or professionals in general that are looking to get into entrepreneurship. I help you build the structure.
and the bridge to take you from employment to entrepreneurship. But there are other things that I do and I help with in terms of internal alignment, five daily non-negotiables, habits, and all of those things. I love the work. So if you are in that place where you need some internal work there, I would love to be the one to help you achieve.
your purpose, your goals, and anything that you want out of life because you only get one. So you should live it up to the fullest for sure.
Federico Ramallo (48:15) Kirk, thank you very much for being here today
Kirk Welsh (48:18) Thank you for having me.