Why IT Matters in Puerto Rico with Michelle Paul

Speaker 1 00:00:07 Hey Tracy. Speaker 2 00:00:08 Hey Speaker 1 00:00:08 Tim. We are here in Puerto Rico and, uh, it has been an amazing time. Yeah, you really like the heat. I Speaker 2 00:00:15 It's shut up. Speaker 1 00:00:16 You and the humidity, the more, the better Speaker 2 00:00:20 Listen. We just got back from the five o'clock sometime bar where I had two different Virgin sugary drinks. And it is only by virtue of the fact that I finished the second one that this like delicious mango grenadine slushie was not the topic of this podcast. I'm Speaker 1 00:00:38 Very glad you finished Speaker 2 00:00:39 That because I finished it in the hallway. Speaker 1 00:00:41 I feel like there should need so much. We could say about that. Speaker 2 00:00:43 No, I can. I can. Speaker 1 00:00:45 We're not gonna try. I do not. That was not a Speaker 2 00:00:48 God, the texture and the flavor and the grenadine. Speaker 1 00:00:52 I did not mean that as a challenge. Speaker 2 00:00:53 It was so great. Speaker 1 00:00:54 So that's so great. We are, we are joined here today by a new friend and somebody that we have, uh, that I at least have been looking forward to meeting for a long time. I think, uh, you may have Tim Speaker 2 00:01:06 You've hyped this person up to me and to the point where I'm like, I don't know her, but I really need to now. Absolutely. Speaker 1 00:01:12 Well, and there we go. This was hyped up to me by both, uh, by both ally and Rachel Speaker 2 00:01:18 Of course, our former staff from Patriots and arms. Speaker 1 00:01:21 Um, so Michelle Paul, uh, welcome to the show. We're really glad to have you. Speaker 3 00:01:25 Hello. I'm really glad to be here. Speaker 1 00:01:27 And we are all recording in the hotel at Salesforce partner summit, which is very exciting because it's in Puerto Rico, which has been really fun. Um, but yeah, we, uh, we just met last night, really excited to hear what you have to say. Um, could you take just a minute and tell us a little bit about your history and, uh, and what you are excited about? Speaker 3 00:01:48 Yeah, absolutely. And I'm only a little sunburned right now as we sit here. Speaker 2 00:01:52 Oh, I'm wicked sunburn. So really don't worry about it. Speaker 3 00:01:55 It's a good place to have a conference. Um, I've been in Salesforce Landia or whatever. Speaker 2 00:02:01 We're yes. Thank you. Speaker 1 00:02:04 <laugh> it's not real. Speaker 3 00:02:06 Um, arguably 17 years or something horrible like that. Um, Speaker 1 00:02:11 Oh gosh. Wait, when did you start? Speaker 3 00:02:13 I mean, I started working at a company that was using Salesforce in 2005. Speaker 1 00:02:18 That predates me. How about you? Speaker 2 00:02:20 I first laid hands on Salesforce. The product in 2005. Yes. Ooh. Speaker 3 00:02:25 Yeah. That's amazing. Uh, March Speaker 2 00:02:27 S March templates Speaker 3 00:02:29 Of 2005 was my first day of work. Speaker 2 00:02:32 <laugh> um, actually you've got me beat by a month. Yes, because it was April that two very distinguished folks who are highly influential business owners in Salesforce Landia today, uh, REM Hoffman and Paul Hagen showed up on the doorstep of my nonprofit. And they were like, you guys should really look at this Salesforce thing. And I was like, I don't know, man, it doesn't look anything, anything like what we do. And they're like, no, no, really it will. And I was like, mm, not right now. And we went with a different database system for a while. Uh, and then finally I had a vice president that got me back into it in like, oh 8 0 9. Speaker 3 00:03:13 So I love that we were so fun to fact the company that I worked for at the time, which I'll talk more about, which was patron manager, technically patron mail back then, right? Uh, we were on NA zero. Yeah, no like, or SSL. They called like whatever, whatever the thing was before NA right. We were an a zero before they did the right thing. So yep. But yeah, we were at the time, I mean, it was the, it was our CRM. We used it for contact management, but, uh, the company was working with arts and cultural organizations to bring email marketing to the world at a time where we had to be like email, it's gonna be a thing you should use it. Oh my gosh. And, uh, what we learned over time was that what they actually needed was CRM. And since we were using Salesforce already, uh, it was, well, we should bring Salesforce as the CRM to this world. And like long story short, yada yada, lots of time passed. We created something called patron manager, which was CRM for the arts ticketing, fundraising marketing altogether. So I was there for 15 years. Uh, and then now for the last year and a half, I've been, uh, with a small nonprofit technology consulting firm called back office thinking and we do Salesforce implementations and we build websites and we do, we're actually not we're, we're not only Salesforce. Yeah. Speaker 2 00:04:33 Thanks for seeing that in front of all my vice presidents while I was standing there last night, Michelle, thanks. Speaker 3 00:04:38 Like, by the way, uh, CDCM is also a thing that we do, but, uh, as we were just talking about it a minute ago, I mean, Salesforce is very much in my blood. I have my 2013 Dreamforce backpack sitting in the corner over there that I've traveled with for the last nine years. So yep. Salesforce land. That's where I live. And Speaker 2 00:04:57 What employee were you Speaker 3 00:04:58 At? Oh, patron like four early years early stage. Speaker 2 00:05:04 Right. What I need from email now is a better spam filter. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that takes every message. That's gonna go into my inbox and pushes it to spam. So I can just tell everybody, I didn't get your email. I must have gone to spam, but I'll go looking for it. I don't think such te Speaker 3 00:05:19 Technology exists. What I, let me tell you what I need. <laugh> you know how Gmail lets you schedule messages for the future? Oh yeah. Yeah. So every time I use one of those things, what I find is that what I really wish is that I could schedule it for the past. Speaker 2 00:05:33 Yeah. Yes. Be like, Speaker 3 00:05:35 Yes, yes. It's afternoon. And I'm finally getting to this. I'm finally digging out of my inbox for the week. Can't I just make this have happened on Tuesday, Tuesday, right? Exactly. Time portal. But no one has built that one yet. So free idea. Speaker 2 00:05:49 And what was great was back in the early days of email, you could blame it on like, you know, a malformed bang path for the email routing where you're like, oh crap. I forgot to include that extra server. So mm-hmm <affirmative> it'll come to you. You might get it anytime between now and the next 15 years, but it'll eventually get there. It'll find its way back before like T C P I P was like the universal routing system. You know, Speaker 1 00:06:11 I used to you're to go tell that in just a second at the top. Speaker 2 00:06:14 I did tell that back Speaker 1 00:06:15 In my college sheet, I, it, I never, Speaker 3 00:06:18 I used to be able to give like entire presentations about the can spam act and Speaker 2 00:06:21 Oh my God. Speaker 3 00:06:22 I love that. Mostly remove that from my brain, but like email deliverability thing. Here's a Tru Speaker 2 00:06:28 Fact you don't know to can spam Michelle. Okay. True story for our listeners. I was a founder and board member of an organization from 1999 to 2001 called the spam con foundation. What? Yes. And what it was was a nonprofit. What? Yes. It was a nonprofit that a bunch of us geeks got together and decided to form because we were looking at spam as a technology limiting thing and we needed the government to intervene because one, it consumed bandwidth that was not available. Two it cluttered inboxes three, it caused consumers unnecessary burden on their telco fan, on their telco plans. Downloading it. And four, it was unwarranted advertisement. Speaker 1 00:07:21 So was this a nonprofit behind the Speaker 2 00:07:24 Spa? This spa? No. Speaker 3 00:07:26 No. Oh, okay. I mean, in the end, Speaker 2 00:07:28 Well, a lot of those nerds who were behind can spam were involved with that. Got it. Okay. Speaker 3 00:07:32 In, in the end, I mean Speaker 2 00:07:34 Spam con foundation, Speaker 3 00:07:35 It was a, I don't, it was not the best law in the world. I mean, it was an, I can tell you it was an opt outlaw, not an opt in-law. Oh my God. So all you have to do is be able to say that there's a method for opting out. You don't actually have to have people confirmed to opt in in order to actually send them email. Interesting. Speaker 2 00:07:51 Michelle does the same voice I do. Speaker 1 00:07:53 <laugh> yes. I did notice that actually. Yeah. Okay. So, um, before we hit record, you said something that got me and Tracy really excited, which was about work. And I'll let you introduce the topic because I think that it is so timely for where everybody in the world is these days. So take it away. Speaker 3 00:08:17 I don't think that work should be stressful. Speaker 1 00:08:20 Can you say that one more time? Sure. In Speaker 2 00:08:22 The back for those in the back. Speaker 3 00:08:23 Yes. Yeah. So I don't think that work should be stressful. This has sort of become my why in the last couple of years, for lack of a better word where there's probably some jobs in the world that are inherently stressful and I acknowledge respect that. And you know, there's lots of things that are like super high stakes where there's a certain amount stress that goes with the job. <laugh> exactly. I'm just gonna keep making Speaker 1 00:08:53 Like, Speaker 3 00:08:55 Um, but okay. Like within the context that I am in, which is working in technology for nonprofits or with all the clients that I work with, which is working at most nonprofits, I don't think that work should be stressful. And that's where I am trying to bring to the world. Speaker 1 00:09:15 <laugh> oh, I have so many things I wanna, but you go, Tim, you, well, um, I mean, there's like 19, like this whole list of questions just like spits out, you know, next it's like the Terminator readout in front of your eyes. It's like, you know, um, so one of the, one of my first questions related to that is, is it more stressful than it used to be? And you know what, like, has it like stress isn't stress? It's not a toggle switch, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> so we're talking in spectrum. So mm-hmm, <affirmative> like, I would, I would love to know, like when did we hit the, it is two is not within acceptable limits of stress and what are acceptable limits of stress. Speaker 3 00:09:59 I mean, I think there's a lot of factors to this. Um, there's some level that I also sort of wanna acknowledge, which is if you're running a company and you're looking at numbers all the time and you're worried about things like, can I make payroll and can I do this? And can I do that? There's a certain amount of stress that is probably coming along with all of that all the time. Um, I also think that you can choose whether or not how much of that to pass on to the other people in the environment with you. Uh, and I think that's a really important thing to be conscious of and a choice to make. But I think a lot of what happens, I don't know. And I struggle with speaking super, super broadly on this for like at a S society level. I think in the last two years, especially, there's been a lot of real life things going on that have a lot of impact on everybody's time and attention and mindset as it comes to work. Speaker 3 00:10:58 But even before that, even outside of pandemic era work, a lot of it is stuff that people do to themselves more than anything else. Um, I mean, I learned this directly where I had so much of my own identity tied up in my job and my work and what I did that even when it wasn't stressful, it was still all consuming in a way that tips really quickly over into stress, the moment, anything isn't going super well. Like if the kind of job that you have could theoretically be done just as a nine to five, and then you're there at 8, 9, 10 o'clock at night, just even just churn and thinking and checking your email and worrying about the email that you got and getting an email and having to respond to the email or thinking that you have to respond to the email and writing emails in your head about things. That's all elements of stress that I think, uh, I am really interested in trying to actively remove from my own life and the life of all of my coworkers. Speaker 2 00:12:09 So yeah, I just have a list of mile along of what I want to unpack there with you. But I think the first question I want to ask you because you hit the nail on the head is in terms of the first thread that I was unpicking in my mind, which was some of this stress is introspective stress, right? It's things that I need to fix for myself. No one else can, right? No one else knows the full contour and shape of my inner mind, except for me. Um, if other people do know that I think we got a problem, but the second part of this, and I can't remember if you were part of the conversation I was having with somebody yesterday on this, but at some point I was talking with somebody at this event and we landed on the fact that basically every CEO, all leadership team members, most vice presidents, and frankly, anybody who occupies a director role are hire needs a freaking personal therapist. Speaker 2 00:13:15 <laugh> right. We just landed there. We needed that because there's two things that happen when you cross into that level of leadership in the corporate Milu one is suddenly your access to information increases exponentially. Every level you go up higher, right? Yeah. So you have to learn how to manage up. You have to learn how to manage down. You have to know which information's appropriate to your level, which you should kick up, which you should ignore and push down. So every level you go up, you, you get exponentially bigger access to potentially more problematic or interesting information goes both ways. And then secondarily, you usually get teams or teams of teams and, you know, you just hit it as well. And you said your inward state reflects outward. And if you can't contain that shit, it's gonna immediately affect your team. And really the only person capable of teaching another human being, how to contain and work with their own emotional state as a freaking therapist. Speaker 3 00:14:22 The point about information I think is really key. And specifically one of the things that I have really tried to learn as a leader and constantly remind myself as a leader is information often actually helps decrease stress. And one of the causes of stress for a lot of other folks in the organization, a lot of individual contributors, a lot of people who are not management level is either an actual lack of information. What are all the decisions that are going on above me, around me, it's above with quotes, right above me, around me. Like, what are the things that I don't know that are gonna affect my life? Or even just a perceived lack of information where, well, there must be things going on above me and around me that I don't know about. And what are those things and what am I not seeing? Speaker 3 00:15:17 So I think that one of the things that I try to be mindful of as a leader in the organization is like, transparency is such an annoying buzzword, but trying to be as clear as possible about what conversations are happening and which ones just are not happening also. Right. If it may seem like there's, it may seem like there's a big master plan here, where is the master plan? Where is there not a master plan? Like what's really going on? How much can we really just paint a picture of? Here's a bunch of things that we're working on that are hopefully designed to make your life better. There's no other big secret happening thing that's going on over here that you don't know about. That's causing. Yeah. Speaker 2 00:15:57 There's like no secret agenda here. Yes. There's no Illuminati. Yes. Unless, Speaker 3 00:16:02 Unless there is Speaker 2 00:16:03 Right. Speaker 3 00:16:03 In which case, yeah. That's a different story. And I think, you know, to whatever degree is possible as a leader to, uh, color in that picture. So it's not just one big, scary ghost of a shape in the background of like, there is a big looming thing that is coming for me. And I don't know what it looks like to whatever degree levels of obviously levels of middle management. There's different amounts of knowledge and information and transparency that's allowed and everything else. But I think just trying as best as possible to either kind of color that picture or be like, you just need to not be worried about this because this is not a thing that is under your control. Speaker 2 00:16:45 Yeah. Which is by the way, Speaker 3 00:16:47 Then to therapy Speaker 2 00:16:48 Be one of the hardest yeah. And then go to Speaker 3 00:16:50 Therapy then therapy. Speaker 2 00:16:50 Right. And then go to therapy. But that's one of the hardest skills. Yeah. I like, I personally like where I am now in my career is like that like mid senior level role. And what's really interesting is the amount of letting go that you have to do. You have to just like accept the fact that you need to trust your manager and your manager has your best interest at heart and they will give you a leash to run with. And that leash might be six inches. It might be 40 feet, but it's there, but you also don't get a full glimpse into what's going on beneath you either. And you need to like figure out a way to unify those two pieces of totally ambiguity information while simultaneously assuring people that everything is okay. Right. Right. And not in a bad way, by the way. Speaker 2 00:17:41 Yeah. But just in a way of like, I've had conversations with current staffers, like, wow, this is my, like me personally, this is my third merger and acquisition that, that I've been involved with to some degree or another, not like architecting it. Yeah. But like landing in the middle of it, through it. Yeah. Through it. Yeah. Right, right. So I'm like, okay, look, you know, like what I can tell you is MNAs are scary. There's a lot of ambiguity. Of course things are changing. We don't know how for an institution besides we are, it's probably gonna take us three to 10 months to really figure this out and understand it. But in the meantime, you are valuable, you are needed, your perspective is worthy. You are worthy. And if you have a list of things that you're concerned about, just make that list because at some point you're gonna need to be asked for it. Right. Speaker 3 00:18:28 And you know, not for nothing, at least at this particular moment, but also if you don't like it, there's a whole bunch of other places that are hiring. So particularly Speaker 2 00:18:38 Right Speaker 3 00:18:38 Now, just another. Yeah. And I mean that, I mean, I'm joking, but I'm also serious where it's just like the idea of you could actually just choose to not be super stressed out about this. Because if you take one step towards zooming back and looking at what is the place of this thing in your life and what are the other options that you have available to you and how much do you need to care about this? The answer like reveal itself to you. Speaker 2 00:19:06 Okay. But you're driving at somebody finding their own self worth. Yes. Which is a really Speaker 3 00:19:10 Hard thing. It's a challenge. Yes. Yes. And I think as, I mean, as managers, so what, like all of the other things that you just said as, as in terms of, uh, sharing information and talking to people about their successes and their value and communicating all that stuff, I think that goes a long way towards helping, but mean you're not wrong about the therapy thing. <laugh>, <laugh>, Speaker 1 00:19:31 There's a lot so interesting to be a CEO and listen to this conversation. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> because it's very different. I think at CEO level, you opt in, in a way that is just different. Am I right about that? Like that's maybe one of my assumptions, so let Speaker 3 00:19:49 All a sec, I have a bad habit of, um, carrying myself as a CEO. Sure. Even though that's not my job. Right. Okay. Um, part of this is in credit work, credit is due. I currently work with a incredible CEO and I spend 13 years working with an incredibly CEO who have really TruD me as an equal and as a partner in things. And so I don't have a great sense entirely of the difference between my job and that to some degree. Speaker 1 00:20:19 And, and that's because you played a really strong partner number two position. Yes. Right? Yes. Okay. So that, that makes sense. And I think my, so, um, and I think that part of the conversation also is that there are acceptable levels of stress, like yes, that are, that are fine. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And, um, in the work that, in the work that now matters did in the last couple years, one of the things that we looked at a lot was the idea of change saturation, which is the ratio of disruption to capacity for change mm-hmm <affirmative>. And that disruption is irre regardless of the source. So that is not disruption at work. That is pandemic. That is, you know, like the great resignation that is client craziness, that is your own family or deaths in your family. Like all of that gets thrown into someone's disruption, mm-hmm <affirmative> and then their capacity to handle that is both personal and corporate. Right. So I am, yes. You're both like lining up at that. So Speaker 2 00:21:21 I'm so happy to hear you say that you go first, Speaker 3 00:21:24 Michelle, I, this is going, this is going into direction that I didn't think I was going with this, but, um, have either of you read Octavia Butler's parable of the sour? Speaker 2 00:21:33 No, I've read, uh, the lith trilogy, but not the parable Speaker 3 00:21:37 Of the summer. So the, the, one of the main things in parable of sour is the main character kind of invents this religion called earth seed. And the key element of it is God is change. Yeah. Um, you have to shape change. Change is the constant thing. Change, change, change is the thing. And just as you were saying, what you were saying, Tim, like part of the, you, you might have, um, hit your disruption limit or like your change saturation, but like too bad cuz it's happening anyway is the thing right? I think, and I think when I really think about change, I, like I said, I didn't think I was going there with that, but that's kind of how I think about it is there's a certain amount of change. Cool. You've hit your change saturation point. It's still happening. What are you gonna do now? I think that's where the only way out is through like, Speaker 1 00:22:31 Well, I think that is where team culture is really important. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and so I can, I can speak for my company mm-hmm <affirmative> and I come from an odd faith background, I'll say it that way. An odd faith background. And part of that was be, is participating in communities in a way that allowed us to corporately say, look, if you've got a little extra, either energy or whatever, throw it in mm-hmm <affirmative> to the community credit pot. And if you have not enough, then take it out. And part of what's happened is that over the last two years, there has been a corporate run on the bank in terms of everybody's out and doesn't have extra to put in mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I think that's a really important way to understand this because culture can be one of those factors that actually gives people life. Speaker 1 00:23:20 And the other thing that like I encountered a lot of times has been, um, that there's there is no morale booster, like a win, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so you can, as a company create capacity through like things going well, mm-hmm <affirmative>, but again, that's such a bad shit run in the last two years of just things going badly that I think everybody's out of gas, including yeah. Like the deep reserves, a lot of people held. And so this is where I, I actually think being an individualist individualistic society works against us. Mm-hmm <affirmative> because we don't understand how to lean on each other appropriately. And if you lean too much, then that's toxicity, but in other cultures, actually, that's kind of a way that you get through it. Speaker 2 00:24:11 There's a word for what you're looking for, Tim. Um, and I was just reading this, uh, or re researching it, it was a concept I was introduced to in the early nineties in college and I kind of read it at the time and I was like, okay, this is interesting, but it's not in the scope of my major. There is a philosophy of governance called communitarianism and it, it almost, if you read it and research, it, there's a number of variations in flavors, but we're, we're used to looking at life through this left, right orientation and through the, you know, giving or taking away of civil liberties. Well, what communitarianism says is the most Liberty that we have can be expressed when we recognize our interconnectivity as a community and therefore there's this whole philosophy about how to create social and political structures to enforce that. Right. It it's almost like star Trek, three Vulcan, right? Like the needs and the many outweigh the needs of the few are the one, right? Yeah. But it's, it's actually much more profound than that. Um, and I was re researching Speaker 1 00:25:23 It's more profound than star Trek <laugh> yes. Is there such a thing? Speaker 2 00:25:26 No. Okay. I just like to say that for dramatic effects. Um, so you know, long story short it's, um, it's a way of changing the way we think about each other as much as it is changing what we think of as a polarized left. Right. Dynamic. And why I said I was so happy to hear you say what you say is because one of the things that I think we as a country have lived through is that like, I go to work, I do the work until the work is done. It's super compartmentalized, but yet it bleeds out everywhere and work is the altar in which we worship. And you know, you talk about those externalities. Well, it's never been more true that we've been more aware of what a crushing externality looks like in a way that challenges our own privileges and assumptions about who we are in the first place. Speaker 2 00:26:23 It just so happens at the pandemic affected everyone. Right? But the externalities that other folks have lived with for years are like fucking racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, like ageism, you name it, right? Those are all externalities that detract from our ability to focus on what we're doing. And you know, if you connect Michelle, what you're saying to everything that's going on in the diversity and inclusion world, it becomes readily apparent that part of creating a diverse inclusive workplace is helping figure out how to manage the stress of both work and accommodate people's externalities, whatever they are. Speaker 3 00:27:11 Two, two things about what you just said. One is, and I think it's worse or better depending on how you look at it in the nonprofit world. <laugh> right. Either be like, I have so many fields working with, or at nonprofits, people take a lot of that, like mission oriented stuff and imbue everything into it. And so work becomes not just work, but it's like working, helping the world and it mushes it all together in a way that is we people make that choice for a reason. We've all made that choice for a reason, but it's also maybe like extremely unhealthy sometimes. But I just, I also think that putting back together this whole idea of like community and everything in the ins and outs, I am also, I try to say really aware of the power dynamic of things too, because what doesn't work is saying anything from the top down about like, we're a community to dah, this is how we're doing it, right. Speaker 3 00:28:09 Like you have to be putting, you have to figure out how to walk that line of like putting the right structures and processes and you can't create, like, you don't create culture, like you cultivate culture. Um, that creates that community. And I mean, I am, I'll go ahead and speak for a whole chunk of people because having seen, uh, what I call the patron manager, diaspora after a whole bunch of us who don't work there anymore are now working at other places like sometimes together and sometimes separately. Uh, the thing that I'm the proudest of actually is there's something kind of intangible, but real that has come out of the community that we managed to create there amongst ourselves that we're, I see all of us now bringing to other places in different kind of roles. Like there's some of us who are in that kind of leadership, number two, number one, like role where they're trying to shape something from the top down. Speaker 3 00:29:12 But I'm also seeing folks who are just going and bringing different ideas to their new companies and trying and talking with their getting really good at managing up in this way. Yeah. And kind of this spread and spreading things that way too, this idea of like, look, maybe work doesn't need like work should not be our whole lives work. Shouldn't be stressful. But when life is stressful and things about work are stressful. It's way nicer to have a community at work that you can rely on in these ways, that kind of bank of like giving and taking where you can really build trust and actually like feel the ability to rely on each other. And just trying to find a way then from a leadership role of tempering that so that it doesn't feel necessary. Right. My job, you, Speaker 1 00:30:06 When you say Speaker 3 00:30:07 Necessary. Yeah. Like my job. Yeah. My job as a leader is to make it is to do everything that I can so that people aren't having to go above and beyond, like above and beyond is a nice thing to, is a nice place to go. If you've like actually got wings at the moment or whatever, but it shouldn't be the expectation all of the time because there's probably something else in your life that is pulling your attention and what we wanna value that and acknowledge that Speaker 1 00:30:39 Well, and I also feel like one of the, one of the things that just does not get said enough is that profitability is so worshiped that it actually becomes exploitative and it doesn't need to be profitability is the margin from which we should draw. So that if you do go above and beyond you reward the people going above and beyond with more compensation for doing that, not because you have to, but because that's the point of saying, thank you. This is a trade. I am, you know, I am exchanging compensation for the effort that you put out there. If you do that, what is really surprising is that people don't do it for the compensation. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. It is just, that is the, like, those are the appropriate actions to behave in and the extreme, absolute, crazy expectations that businesses created around what is acceptable profitability above what people are actually making. Yes. Is, is discuss to me it's disgusting and where it feels like that's where capitalism did not need to go as far as it did. And I'm an economists did I'm saying, and Speaker 3 00:31:53 It's, I mean, the, the question is exactly what you just said, which is okay, cool. Where does that profit go? Because I will point out that you have, if you're running a business, there's inherently money that has to happen and be changing hands in that business. And I also think that is one of the other traps of nonprofit world, where we get into, which is, um, I've joked for years that if I ever open an Etsy shop, it's gonna be just a series of like four, like principal posters that every nonprofit and every business that works with nonprofits need to like print out and have on their wall. So like, imagine the big fancy, like Etsy, like live, left, love font for these. Oh yeah. And it's like, sometimes things cost money. Speaker 1 00:32:38 No, they don't Speaker 3 00:32:40 Sometimes Speaker 1 00:32:40 Loving these. Speaker 3 00:32:42 Sometimes things take time. Sometimes you have to do work. And sometimes the answer is no. Speaker 1 00:32:53 I mean, absolutely. Well Speaker 3 00:32:55 You, you have to, and I am like the world's like foremost optimist, you have to like, understand that. I am like, absolutely I I'm. Yes. And all the way down, but you gotta put those on the wall and look at them every once in a while, because these things matter. This is the reality that we're working Speaker 1 00:33:13 With. And as an economist, I just have to say, it's not a coincidence that is called nonprofit. <laugh> like this, like fundamentally. Yeah. The core of it is in a for-profit you do as little as you can for as much as possible Speaker 1 00:33:29 Uhhuh <affirmative> and in a nonprofit, you do as much as you can for as little as possible leaving nothing left over. Yes. That is actually really to understand. Well, it, yeah, it should not be nothing left over, but what we have to understand is these econ, these are separate economies that actually create differences. Anyway, one other thing I just wanna throw in. Oh. And so I'm curious if you guys will hate me after I say this. Okay. Communist. Um, and so it's been interesting to me and I, I'm gonna go into my faith background here a little bit, but it's been interesting to me because, um, my parents are very religious in the best sense of the word. Yeah. And Tracy's met, I love they are except having your dad's playing settlers. Yes. And then he, then he steals longest road and smiles the whole time. Speaker 1 00:34:19 Yes, exactly. Your dad is wow. Super intense. My parents actually honored like Sundays are a day of not working. Yep. And would not open their pottery store or restaurant. And even in like a three day art show where our entire livelihood was dependent on art show struggled a lot because often they would say we don't like open on Sundays for this art show. And so like, they just are faithful people, really, really amazing people. And so I got into a study one time on what is like, why that is what it's called. And so the, the idea of Sabbath comes from an idea of an economic reality of enough there's such power. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And that is, that is actually really critical to understand is that I think there's a cost to a world in which we are constantly saturating ourselves with like in satiation mm-hmm <affirmative> and, and wanting always wanting more and never being content mm-hmm <affirmative> and that's actually written into the fundamentals of capitalism. Mm-hmm <affirmative> because economic agents are always dissatisfied right. In, in our, in our economies. That Speaker 2 00:35:36 Is actually really problematic. Speaker 3 00:35:41 If I bring that back to the stress question, I think the thing is, even if you're, so let's say that you're listening to this and you agree with everything that we all just said, because we're all super smart and this is all correct. Right. Um, if all you're, if what you're aiming for in your business is enough. You have to find the right kind of sustainable definition of enough in order to not have it be the thing that keeps you up every night though. Right. Right. Because anything, anything that feels like it's just barely enough is gonna be the thing where, okay, well, any one client could leave or like any one project could go off the rails and suddenly you're tipping over into, well, it, it would've been enough <laugh> if, but then this thing went wrong. Right. And now I'm back to being stressed out again. Speaker 3 00:36:40 Right. So I think that there is something also to like, and on the smaller, like kind of micro scale, we're all in consulting in some form or another, like we don't pat our projects enough for like contingency of either time or money in a lot of ways is like, we try to keep that number really small. And then we're kind of, and then we're not giving ourselves enough room for the, whatever goes wrong or you don't get the project. And so, and, and figuring out how to find that right mindset when it comes at the macro level to the whole business of like, what is the real Margine here? That's gonna feel good and that's gonna keep this from being stressful, but we're also not pushing and pushing and pushing for more, for more is safe, right. Finding that right balance of, we wanna look, I I'm, I was hired at back office as VP of growth strategy because I, we wanna grow strategically. Speaker 3 00:37:31 And that is what I'm trying to do. And it turns out that that takes a lot of different forms in terms of like lots of operational stuff in project management and this and that as we kind of look around at all the different things that we do, but, you know, it's great to be at a place where, okay, why do we wanna grow? Is we wanna grow so that we can keep hiring more people and pay them well, and keep doing this good work for good clients and putting more of this like good into the world. Like, there's no one else who's going, there's no one else banging down our door being like, well, we need you to actually grow at like 43% year over year so that we can have that money and go put it away somewhere. Like there's no, there's none of that. It's just, we wanna do this because this is the thing that we wanna be doing. And it's great. Well, Speaker 2 00:38:10 I, okay. So you touched on two things. One is, you know, backtracking from your most recent point mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, that sort of like I have in the span of my career, run into either VPs of growth or chief growth officers or chief revenue officers whose entire mindset is, I'm gonna peg this to some percentage why over why of growth and we're gonna hit it. Right. Whatever that number is, we're gonna grow 15% year over year, every year, we're gonna grow 30% year over year, every year. And inevitably I ask them how I'm like, well, what market analysis did you run to come up with that number? What, what kind of assessment of your customer's needs? Yeah. Tim's justing in the background. Yes. And it's because what they did was they looked at the totality of their careers. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and said, this company is this big. Therefore I think what should happen is we should grow 12% annually or 14% or 27% annually. And that's it. Speaker 3 00:39:22 Let me cover my own, but here and just say like, uh, yes, I think 15% year over year is a perfectly fine achievable number, Paul. Um, Speaker 2 00:39:33 We don't, no, we're just kidding. Speaker 3 00:39:35 And I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm joking, not joking. I also think that like, yeah, it's good to have goals, like pick a, like pick a goal, validate it, look at what's possible. Look at what you're doing. We're playing with all sorts of numbers and stuff. Right. Like all of this, but exactly that idea. Like, but that idea of, because it's the number that someone else said somewhere sometime is like, come on. Speaker 2 00:39:56 Yeah. But that's how a lot of companies I know were yeah. It, doesn't the number doesn't have. It's the why behind the number that doesnt get analyzed. Exactly. Right. And that's actually what I'm pointing to is it's like, we're gonna do 30% this year. And you're like, well, why says, who thing? Oh, wait, wait, wait, before you go there. The other thing I wanna say is backtracking further to one of your earlier points. Mm-hmm <affirmative> Speaker 2 00:40:21 Inspiration is generally not stressful. Mm-hmm <affirmative> true or fault in your opinion. Mm-hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> okay. And the reason why I'm asking that is because I think it's important to clarify that stress is a negative externality mm-hmm <affirmative> that can have, in my opinion, positive undercurrents mm-hmm <affirmative> right. Like there are some things that I will do nine hours before they're due, because I'm like, this is the perfect motivation. And in so long as we don't lose electricity, everything's gonna be fine. Right. But I do that purposefully for myself, but I also will say like, sure, there are times I wake up at 3:00 AM and I'm like, what am I doing? I'm thinking about work because I'm inspired to solve a problem or I'm inspired to create something. And I think why I wanted to call that out is because what I feel like we're actually talking about here with stress mm-hmm <affirmative> is the aggregation of all of these factors on the life of a person who is merely there to perform a function that pays them money so that they can move forward in our economy. Yes. Right. And sometimes people, Tim, to your point, do more. Sometimes they do baseline and sometimes they underperform. And guess what? There are mechanisms for addressing all of those mm-hmm <affirmative>. But I think stress mm-hmm Speaker 3 00:41:51 <affirmative> Speaker 2 00:41:53 Is something that, where I'm pointing to on this is stress is something that is almost always negative and almost always detracts from a person's ability to actually do the task assigned to them in the first place. So what are the contributing factors to that stress? Right. Speaker 3 00:42:13 It's also a lot of stress is a feeling that things are not under your control. Yeah. And I think that's a big aspect of it. I mean, some of the fondest memories of my career have been arguably spending ridiculous hours working on things that we were like super excited about. Like, let's invent this conference, let's invent this product. Let's invent this process, like where yeah, sure. We're gonna order pizza and stay here until 10 o'clock tonight because we're gonna get this done. And we're super excited about it. And that was, that would be stressful if I were doing it every day forever. It would be stressful if I wasn't excited about the work or my coworkers, it would be stressful if it felt like that work wasn't being valued in any way. Right. Like there's all these factors that would make that bad, bad, stressful. Right. But yeah. Instead it was, we're building a thing and it's cool. And I'm hanging out with my friends and I'm excited about this thing that we're doing. And so it was great. So just coming back and then being mindful of like, okay, as a leader, you can't force that, like that has to like be don't. I can't expect that of anybody that has to be a thing that you either make space for, or you bake not necessary, or however it is that you approach it <laugh> Speaker 1 00:43:31 Well, and I was, I, I think I was gonna highlight that one of the things, it took me a long time to learn as a CEO, is that my decisions, and I think this is true in your case. And also in your case that a, the decision about how much we're gonna grow and what that, like, what that does downstream a decision like that can have massive consequences across an organization. So if you pick a, if you pick something like 30% or higher mm-hmm <affirmative>, that will put stress all throughout your organization and leaders, I don't think pay enough attention to that. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and they don't see what that costs other people. And that, and, and I think so the Speaker 3 00:44:16 Decision, it could put stress all the way down there. Speaker 1 00:44:18 Absolutely. Right. Speaker 3 00:44:19 Like there's a in theory, ways that that could work. Absolutely. Speaker 1 00:44:24 And I think that's my point is that, is that that has to be part of the calculus. It can't just be throwing a dart at the wall and saying, it's gonna be this percent. And like sales people just gotta get this quota in line mm-hmm. And then, you know, the stressors on down all the way to customers in a lot of ways. So that's one thing I wanna say. And the other is that it took me a long time to understand that agency is privilege. So the ability to work in job's that you have the ability to get excited about is its own privilege. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And that I like what is exciting and interesting to me is obligation and stress to others. And it took me way too long to understand just cuz I like staying up and thinking about that. And I'm very excited about does not mean that others on my team are or should get excited about that. And that was, I mean, that was a lot of work. Thank you, Angela and Jenny and Mitchell and Tracy and others to just kind of get that through my head. But it was really important for me to understand that the way like for me, stress is energizing and I know like, is it negative or positive and is an externality. All of that is a big question, but the thing I actually like, I really, really revel in stress. It does not always kill like is always negative for me in a way. But there's a huge, Speaker 1 00:45:45 There's a huge privilege related to that. Yes. That is around ownership company and also have other agencies. Speaker 3 00:45:50 And I mean, I feel, I feel the need to put a little bit of a disclaimer on some of what I'm saying, not quite disclaimer, but context, which is, um, I also look the company where I am now. There's no outside investors. There is actually nobody looking over the shoulder and being like, hello, where's your 30% coming from? I am, I'm on the board of a company. Like I know what, I know what this actually looks like in reality for a lot of different, a lot of organizations. But I don't think that changes a lot of what I'm still saying here in terms of the actual decisions that you make. And I'm seeing this every day with like the decisions that you make as a leader, as management, as anything as the board of a for-profit company still can be, you could still make choices that are friendly to the people who work there. Speaker 3 00:46:37 Like that's an actual thing. You can still make this decision to say, we're gonna prioritize a situation where work doesn't need to be stressful. And we're gonna figure out how to work towards these goals in a way that has that a little bit at the center of what we're looking at, even while we're pushing for, okay, we wanna get to profitability or we wanna get to this much growth or we wanna get to this, whatever, like there, you can still look at sustainability. You can still look at the way that you're doing it and say, Hmm, maybe let's not make that choice. Speaker 1 00:47:09 And the, and partly that can be there is this amount of disruption happening in society right now? Yes. And that has to factor in mm-hmm <affirmative>. So that came home to me in a very concrete way when there was a shooting and some of my staff and, and I'm embarrassed to admit that someone had to point this out to me, me, like we need to allow for some of our staff to take a step back today. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and to actually create space to not be on zoom mm-hmm <affirmative> thank you, Rachel. Very much. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and to actually understand that, just because I'm a white person of privilege, that my experience of the shooting is radically different than others on our teams. Cause I think that that level of understanding about what's going on in your own organization around this is really critical to understand that's if you're at the top and if you're not, yeah. I just feel like that's so much more stressed to just know that your coworkers are not being covered that way, you know? Well, Speaker 3 00:48:09 And I mean, I'll take it even a step further also, and also thanks to HL, but like even taking it a step further is like, there's the things that are going, there's the things that make the news. And then there's plenty of things that don't make the news, right? Yeah. There's things that are going on in everybody's life all of the time. And I think part of building a equitable organization is building the room into this, comes back to the padding, the projects really like building the room into everything that you do of like what's gonna happen if somebody can't show up today for any reason. I mean, there's lots of, there's lots of scenarios that come about where suddenly like everything that you were thinking was gonna go one way, doesn't go that way anymore. And I think honestly, I mean, okay, to, I'm gonna take this in one other direction that I didn't think I was gonna take this, but I think this is actually really central to my why. Speaker 3 00:48:59 I don't think we should be stressful. Um, at patron manager five and a half years ago, we had a really terrible thing happen, which was, uh, our coworker Claire was murdered. And that was, that was a thing that I remember this happened. I remember this. Yeah. And talk about, I mean, I still look certain phrases get into vocabulary. I still end up using the phrase, get hit by a bus in different ways, but I'm usually try to catch myself on that. But like you wanna talk about like things that happen out of nowhere and suddenly, you know, this is not just like, well, what's going on in someone's life. It's like, there's a person who said like at the core of a thing and she doesn't there anymore. Right. Um, the, the aftermath of that, not just, I mean, I could talk for five hours about Claire's kind of impact in the world and everything that I've seen come out of the whole community of people that she touched. Speaker 3 00:50:02 Um, but on a, on how that affected my outlook towards work is it made, it's made me extremely aware of, do you know what matters right now is like, not necessarily these things that we're getting super caught up in, in the moment, because there could be something that happened tomorrow that you could not believe would ever happened. Um, and so what would you do then? Right. And any time you're talking about any employee being irreplaceable or indispensable, like guess, guess the fuck, what, like eventually things change. Like there is no stopping that. So, uh, when you look at kind of just how you're building, like what you're expecting of people every single day and what, you're the weight that you're putting on any one person or the weight that you're putting on yourself is like, you know, I have a little bit of the like, okay, cool. Speaker 3 00:51:04 Like just, just for example, what if, uh, something completely unexpected happened tomorrow? Like you, you can't plan for that kind of stuff, but you can acknowledge that you've gotta be able and ready to plan for that stuff because otherwise it just it's unworkable. I mean, and part of it, you've learned this by going through it also, right. Like I wouldn't said that we were capable of getting through that and then we did. Um, but it's, so that's part of also what I bring to kind of everything where it's like, what is the level of like, like what is the, what is level of real world importance that is happening here right now? It's like, it's fine. It's gonna be fine. This is gonna be okay. Like the worst case scenario in a lot of ways has already happened. And so I'm a little bit able to kind of go into a lot of different situations and just be like, look, we're making all the right choices. Speaker 3 00:52:00 We've identified a bunch of problems we're taking moves right now. We're gonna do this thing and this thing and the other thing, and we're gonna try to move in this direction. And I think we might have a colored couple of weeks, but I think we're just gonna be nice to each other. And we're gonna do a reality check about like, okay, being on a much less like dark level, we had a bunch of turnover and we met a bunch of people like at, at that current company, we had a bunch of turnover for, you know, not horrible reasons. Um, people getting good new jobs in other places and very exciting for them. Right. And so like, and we did have to go to go to a bunch of clients and be like, hi, we have do a little reset on this timeline because like, literally this is not possible right now. And it was fine and it was fine. And we got through it. Everyone was fine. Like, but it's, it's all good. Speaker 1 00:52:47 I think here it's Speaker 3 00:52:48 So Speaker 1 00:52:49 Interesting. So a I'm I'm so sorry about Claire and thank you for sharing that, sharing that story with us. Um, and I know that that made it, uh, an impact on many people. Yeah. Um, I also feel like we've fallen into believing. Some things are not discussable mm-hmm <affirmative> get absolutely are mm-hmm <affirmative> so a good case in point is that there is an employee that was on our team that is now on your team. Yes. I, I was very excited for this person to join your team and me too. And part of what worked really well is that we went through so much transition that I finally was like, just tell me, yeah. And let's have a conversation and I will help you in any way. I can find your next thing. And we can stage this out in a way that works best for everybody. And that actually started to take this stress down. I was like, wow, you can talk. Like if you have a, you can create the conditions where staff can tell you yes. About them leaving your organization. You can have a total rational conversation. I mean, I was the same thing happened with Tracy. Yes. And it's like, right, fine. It's been okay. Speaker 3 00:53:59 The same thing happened. I was so, and I, I was so honored, shouted out to Justin and Mike, they're not listening to this, but I was so, so honored that both of them like trusted me enough to tell me, Hey, here's, what's going on. Here's what I'm looking at. Here's what I'm thinking about. And like bringing me into that process because I, like, I also know every piece of advice that you ever get in the freaking world about like working is Speaker 2 00:54:21 You don't tell, Speaker 3 00:54:22 You don't tell your current company that you're leaving. You don't tell me around, you're leaving. Like, so I understand that he's allowed to go against, into the grain to like, be able to actually open that up and like, say that what's happening. And I really appreciated it. And it was great. And I was hopefully a little bit helpful. So Speaker 2 00:54:34 Yeah. Did you too ever read the book? The lean startup? Speaker 3 00:54:37 I haven't, it's one of those ones that sits there. Speaker 1 00:54:40 I, I thumb through it and I was like, I can't get leaner than I am. This guy's like comparing life, Speaker 2 00:54:47 But here's the thing I want to call out about that book. Yeah. There was something in it that I thought was genius in a lot of ways. And that is thinking about how you execute things minimally, right? Yes. And it's also sort of a MVP. Yeah. Yeah. MVP. And, and, and, and, and not only just MVP, but also constructing a work environment where you don't hire or don't act ahead of what you know is coming into you. I, I, there were some things that are philosophically interesting about that book. Mm-hmm <affirmative> I think that kind of book is not aging. Well, mm-hmm <affirmative> right. Love. I don't think it's aging. Speaker 1 00:55:24 Well, that is interesting. Why not? Speaker 2 00:55:27 Because when that book was written, there was a very specific form of Silicon valley culture that was built around sort of the hero entrepreneur. And there's a series of books that are all about how to help entrepreneurs be hero heroes with the most minimal amount of things possible and what it doesn't actually reveal to you. And because I know this because I've been part of two different companies that did either idiot shit like 30% or nothing baby, or like I'm gonna gro no matter what the cost, no matter how hard it grinds my employees, it doesn't reveal that underbelly of what it does to everybody, except for the entrepreneur in that model. And it's super hard. And then you wonder why there are like cults of personality around specific specific leaders, because it is replacing a person's innate faith and in themselves with faith in this sort of like Joseph Campbell hero's journey leader. Yeah. You know, taking us all to the promised land of fully developed application on the market, product acquisition, whatever the hell your goal is. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> now it was brilliant in the moment. Just like lean in mm-hmm <affirmative>, which is another book that I have really a hate, hate relationship with now was brilliant in the moment. Yes. Speaker 3 00:56:59 All these books. Speaker 2 00:57:00 It wasn't right. They're Speaker 3 00:57:02 Not aging. Well, yes. Well, it's just like anything else. And now I say this as the spouse of a historian. So I have a lot of thoughts about sources and footnotes and everything. Oh. It's like, like the, I think with any kind of business book you have to kind of, what is it? Every book, every business book is in reaction to something probably. Right. And so like, you've got things where it's like, okay, what's normal right now. Haha. Here's the like one, here's the disruption book that I'm gonna do. We're gonna drop the whole thing. Right? Yeah. And so then what, then what then what then what, um, I, I have a longstanding rule that with any business book I read the main thing I'm I'm looking for one thing that I'm like absolutely. Yes. And I'm especially looking for one thing where I'm like, absolutely Speaker 2 00:57:45 No, Ooh, I like that. Yep. I do the same thing. Yep. Well, I mean that he works age in the same way that like freaking 1950s era Tom and Jerry cartoons don't age, what are you're like, you know, I can, you know, you're like, please God's no, don't watch that. Yeah. Um, I will say one thing, Tim, to your, I was working for you when this happened. Um, and it is to the immeasurable credit of the kind of culture, getting to your comments around culture that we created for me, it took me two years and I still don't think I'm fully recovered from January 6th. Um, and I do remember that day vividly and there were three things that happened in succession. We were in an executive team meeting and I can't remember who, but they were like, uh, have you guys turned on the TV? Speaker 2 00:58:41 And we were like, no. Why? And they were like, there's something really horrible happening in DC right now. And your mind goes through all the usual list of stuff. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you're like shooting riot, you know, whatever, what you don't think of is co attempt in your own company or in your own country. Excuse me, co attempt is definitely something we did not plan on mm-hmm <affirmative>. And for me it was such a fundamental breaking point to my participation in democratic society because I realized the 30 previous years that I'd spent just disappeared mm-hmm <affirmative> in, in that day mm-hmm, <affirmative> just disappeared in that day and they have remained gone. And it was to your company's immense credit that somebody could do that in the middle of an executive team meeting that somebody could say, I think we need to just stop work today and figure out what in the hell is going on. Because the other thing that was true is I started getting news reports saying shit's happening up in Sacramento and that's only 90 minutes away from me. And I'm like, great. You know, like this is all the nut jobs that we're doing. The Trump parades for three months Uhhuh before and after the election who are now right around the corner from my house mm-hmm <affirmative>. Speaker 2 00:59:58 And then the other thing that I will say, and it was one of my colleagues, uh, Ryan that I was working with, he and I had a meeting with a fairly important project that we were trying to put the button up on and we were getting on the phone with those clients and we were all just staring each other on zoom. And Ryan was like, Hey, um, Tracy's wrecked. I don't think you guys are in a good place. And I am certainly just watching this, like, do you guys wanna just cancel this meeting? Yeah. And everybody, including myself was like, and it was immediately stress relieving because I could do the thing that I wanted to do and that was go upstairs and cry. And that was literally what I did for the rest of the day. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so like, those are what we mean by things you can't plan on. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Speaker 1 01:00:48 You can create the agency where Ryan Speaker 3 01:00:51 Can cancel that meeting Speaker 1 01:00:52 Can cancel a meeting, cancel meeting without meeting that's right. Checking with me exactly. Like that was three layers. And it's just like, we're doing this. Yes. And I feel like that is possible. And we've lost the imagination for that. Speaker 3 01:01:03 Yes. Right. It should not be. And thank you, Tracy. Like, no, totally. No, absolutely. Like that idea of, is this a moment Speaker 2 01:01:11 Also Speaker 3 01:01:12 Fine. Yes. Is this a moment where like we could get out of this in some other way? Like, do we have to power through it? Like, that's the idea it's like, we're not doing surgery, you know what I mean? Like whatever it is. Yeah. Like, like we're, we're not cur do you have to, do you have to no. Cause maybe we could just not and it would be okay. Yeah. Speaker 1 01:01:30 Yeah. And I think, yeah. Um, so I want to just like pull it back. Yes. <laugh> thank you so much. Yeah. For bringing such an incredible, well thank you for bringing yourself to the conversation and I, I, your time, thank you. Planning me telling you before I was like, we just need you show up with your intellect and your authenticity and you did thank you and what an amazing topic and what a great perspective on it. Um, and yeah. And thank you very much. And I do. Yeah. I feel like there's so much more to uncover on that. And so I hope we're gonna see like articles or a book or something I tense off. I Speaker 3 01:02:12 Think that someone goes straight for me. I'll do it. Speaker 1 01:02:14 What's Speaker 2 01:02:15 Your new fascinat. Speaker 1 01:02:16 TikTok. Yeah. God, Speaker 3 01:02:18 The data, the data, data siphoning platform. Speaker 1 01:02:20 I think you should. I think you should strongly consider that nobody had, nobody's brought that before as, Hey, this is the thing I wanna talk about. Um, and you say it so well, I don't think work should be stressful, so thank you. Thank you for joining us and thank you everybody for listening to, um, this episode and we hope that the recording is okay. We've just got like a microphone in the middle of this room and um, there's so anyway, thank you. Yeah. Speaker 3 01:02:45 Thank you so much for having me. Can I give one plug? Speaker 1 01:02:49 Yeah. I'll Speaker 3 01:02:49 Leaves go for it. Just promote what we were talking about before, um, the antiviolence project in New York, uh, is a nonprofit that works with domestic violence, like, uh, people experiencing domestic violence. Um, we've got, we set up a fund in Claire's name, actually it's the Claire Randall fund for, uh, economic empowerment or something along those lines. We'll Speaker 1 01:03:11 Put a link to that in the Speaker 3 01:03:12 Show. We'll put a link. People wants to donate. Yeah. If anyone, because I, every time, if I'm, if I'm gonna shout around one way, I wanna shout, shout her out in that way as well. Um, but AVP does really good work and we, uh, just love the idea of kind of carrying her spirit forward that way. Speaker 1 01:03:29 Michelle, thank you so much for joining Speaker 3 01:03:30 Us. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 4 01:03:33 This is Tracy KZA Speaker 5 01:03:34 And I'm Tim Lockey, Speaker 4 01:03:36 And you've been listening to why it matters an independent production that captures our passions, personalities, and purpose for technology as applied to the impact economy. Speaker 5 01:03:47 All of that's important, but even more important. We are here to have fun and introduce some of the people and ideas that keep us up at night and get us out of bed in the morning. Speaker 4 01:03:56 We are so grateful that you've been listening to us. We have no idea why you'd wanna do that. Maybe you lost a bet. Maybe you're stuck in a car with someone else controlling the sound system, or maybe you are truly interested in what we have to say. Speaker 5 01:04:12 Whatever the reason, whether it's a bet or you're a believer, would you hit subscribe or if you've already done that, would you mind leaving us a review? 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