Beyond the Award: Building Culture That Actually Drives Performance

[00:00:00] Kelly: the word collaboration is. The conversations and the communication that happens and the acknowledgements and having that voice. And I think the other part of that is not necessarily being told how to do every single thing.

[00:00:12] Kelly: I think given the freedom and flexibility to work the way that you want to in order to achieve those outcomes, having that responsibility of. we need this result. How you get there. You have some degree of autonomy on kind of figuring that out. And I think we see that with work from home and, hours and other things like that.

[00:00:58] Kelly: Everyone. Kelly McGuire with Luday Digital. Excited to get into today's topic,

[00:01:02] Todd: everybody. This is Todd Juno, Kelly's partner, and thanks for listening. Today we're gonna talk about, , these awards things again, Kelly, that we keep getting ourselves into for better or worse. , But we are. Now, two year in a row, , honorees of the Inc.

[00:01:21] Todd: Best Places to Work and honestly, out of winning agency awards or I don't know, media awards or whatever, I don't know that I care a lot about all of them except for this one, because this is the only one that makes me feel like you and I. Have achieved something that we've set out to achieve, which is we gotta get up and go to work every day.

[00:01:46] Todd: , 'Cause neither of us have won the lottery, so that's not gonna change. which means everybody that works, , on our team has to get up and go to work every day. And the least we can do is try to make it. Rewarding, , in a variety of different ways. And that seems to change, , a lot in terms of what was rewarding five years ago versus what's rewarding currently.

[00:02:08] Todd: And, and we learned that through going through these, programs. And I think I really like the Ink program because it is so hands off from a management level and it truly is an independent, private. Survey of the, team that they fill out. , So there's no way you and I obviously can influence that or anything like that.

[00:02:28] Todd: So, , I feel like it's a good barometer and measurement for us to understand how we're guiding the company. , So I guess it's the one that matters to me most personally. I don't know how you feel about it personally, but I'm guessing similar.

[00:02:42] Kelly: I remember talking about this kind of the last time and, it's definitely validating in the context of a lot of what led what went into when you and I started this, which was, you know, we've always said that one of the reasons why our sort of model or vision has worked is because it creates an opportunity for.

[00:03:04] Kelly: The best people to do the best work. And it's simple to say that, but yeah, it's really interesting on what it takes to fulfill on that. And it's an ongoing and evolving thing. I mean, think about that. we've evolved this through. COVID with no, offices through virtual, through ups and downs in the labor market.

[00:03:24] Kelly: there's a lot of chaos that has created a lot of consistency and, you know, there's no perfect scenario. I mean, work is still work. We still have stressful times for our people and good and bad and ups and downs, but. At the end of the day, I think, you know, one of the conversations you and I have the most is the thing that I feel the strongest about in, what we built is that I'm always very confident that the foundation of what we do, which is genuinely doing the very best work that we are tasked with and entrusted in doing, is something that I never waver in having our strong belief whether or not we achieve client goals or hit targets or.

[00:03:59] Kelly: Other things happen. I always feel good that our starting core of we do exactly what we promise we will do, which is. Making the best possible decisions, turning over every stone being created, really genuinely thinking about the business and trying to spend every dollar intelligently. And the only reason that I'm always so convicted in being able to feel good about that position is because of the people that we have.

[00:04:24] Kelly: And the only reason that I think that they show up that way is because of the environment that we've built, not just us, but everyone together in the collaboration in that. And I think that's really important and really kinda hard to think of. I mean, we see that in the lack of turnover, which we've talked about.

[00:04:39] Kelly: And the willingness to kind of see it through and stick through. And I'm, you know, there's no world in which a lot of our people probably haven't been offered, you know, recruiter enticements and other things and other opportunities. And I know that we do what we can to try and make sure that everyone's participating in a way that feels meaningful here.

[00:04:57] Kelly: , But there's always, you know, some sort of grass is always greener. And I say all that to basically come around to the reason this is so meaningful is the fact that people validate that they feel that way and actually kind of answer the questions and go through the process it's so fundamental to what we've built and what's important for us to be able to stand out and is what is rapidly becoming an area that's harder and harder to stand out.

[00:05:20] Kelly: It's really difficult to make a case as to why. One group really is going to buy Facebook ads or cer or Google ads a whole lot differently or better than someone else. And I think where we've been able to build that story is sure. The end result of that is, I won't say easy, but it is probably not the most valuable component of the service and engagements that we provide.

[00:05:44] Kelly: What is the most valuable is the thoughtfulness, the creativity, The pressure testing, the advancement, the searching under every stone. I don't think that people that come in and simply sort of check their hours, put in their 40 hours, do that. I don't think you're ever gonna get that, right.

[00:06:01] Kelly: You're gonna get path of lease resistance. what can I do? Because I'm part of, you know, a small cog in a massive machine, so I'm just gonna do what I need to do. And so it's really important to keep a culture of not being so easy to slide into that being. What you're getting. And, and I think that's a death blow to agencies, especially small agencies that, you know, need to be able to differentiate and compete when volume and scale isn't necessarily the, thing you can kind of point to.

[00:06:28] Kelly: And so again, all of that is to say why I think this award is, emblematic of the most important value that we have, which is what we offer in, in the form of our people and access to our people.

[00:06:38] Todd: Yeah, I mean that is ultimately our brand promise. It's literally, we've said this before, why the name of our company is the name of our company.

[00:06:44] Todd: And I think one of the things I was gonna ask or point out to talk about next is something you just mentioned, which is scale. You know, we have the fortune of other agencies being our clients, , from small agencies like us, independent agencies like us, to a large, , not independent agencies. We have worked under.

[00:07:03] Todd: A couple of different HoldCo, , agency structures. And so we get to see their inner workings. We hire people from those companies and we get to hear from them what it was like working for those companies. And the one thing that I, kind of always go back to, and we've talked about this and even some of our business consultants and people we've talked to, have said our problem that very well may be.

[00:07:27] Todd: We can't scale this. it's such an intimate operations model that you and I are so heavily involved in that it's not scalable because how could we possibly maintain that level of intimacy? and I'm gonna go into one of the reports, , and some of the word clouds that came up in our results.

[00:07:49] Todd: . How could we possibly maintain that if we were 500 people? And so one of the, biggest sort of theme that came up last year and again this year is why people, you know, rank our company, our culture, our work environment as being something that they favor and like so much is the key word, collaboration.

[00:08:08] Todd: and it sort of echoes throughout all the different of working in our company. Whether it's working with peers and teammates, , and or you and I, you know, management, leadership, owners, whatever, being involved in that collaboration. , Again, back to that intimacy, it's so hands-on. It's so high touch.

[00:08:26] Todd: It's so collaborative. I think, you know, the idea of trying to scale that from 25 to even a hundred people is paralyzing to think about. 'cause I just don't know how you maintain and preserve that. And when we hear, when we hire people that come from an agency that have 500 or a thousand or more people, one of the most common things we hear is very little collaboration or, Authentic collaboration or intimate collaboration, like collaboration that's like real, other than just people just doing the do and doing their task and their job every day. And it might involve interacting with some other people to get that done, but those interactions are very you know, they're not personal.

[00:09:09] Todd: They're not for any other reason other than I just need to check a box. Can you help me check that box? And. You know, it's superficial and I just need to get through that. And so collaboration is what always comes up in our keyword cloud about why people love our organization. But I do, I think the idea of scale is something that, while we haven't crossed that bridge yet, we might someday, , I wonder if we'll be able to do this at the degree in which we do it now.

[00:09:37] Todd: I think your point, one more comment. I think your point about. Could we still fostered an environment where the brand promise is what it is, which allows people to do everything that they can do? I think we could always do that, but I would be fearful that the intimacy around collaboration would get diluted.

[00:09:55] Kelly: Yeah. I mean, I've thought about it before and, and I don't really know what the point of unsustainability is. I definitely think it can be grown. Could it be grown into the thousands? I don't really know, but the two words that kind of come to mind as you're going through that for me are sort of personality and blind spots.

[00:10:12] Kelly: and for me, the, concept of personality I think is really important to the model because I think the personality is something that we've talked a lot about. That's one of the hardest things to identify with people. I mean, skills can be trained and refined and grown. , Personality is something that.

[00:10:29] Kelly: really hard to change that amongst people. And so finding the self-starters, finding the motivated people, finding the passionate people, finding the creative people, finding the emotionally intelligent people that have the ability to ebb and flow and understand the nature of the work and understand that I think.

[00:10:45] Kelly: is really critical to that. And that's at all levels. You know, a lot of times at that large scale, a lot of the conversation comes around, middle management often becomes the problem. and, you know, so I think that comes with personality and, and that's where the idea of blind spots for me comes in.

[00:10:59] Kelly: Which I think one of the problems with scale is, it's inevitable that there are going to be hard times in what we do and. Difficult grinds and asks and unreasonableness and, one of the things that I think helps a lot is when you have those right personalities that are willing to show up and see it through and be sort of that even keel on that ability to make through.

[00:11:19] Kelly: I think visibility and recognition matters a lot and the ability to know that yes, I am, you know, I'm going above and beyond and I'm doing this and it's not being taken for granted, or it's not being lost in the shuffle, or it's, Obviously everyone wants their raise and, their growth and all that, and that's what a job is.

[00:11:35] Kelly: But the other part of that I do think is that value that is conveyed. And I think being seen and acknowledged and heard can go a long way. And that's one of the things I think can get lost in large scale if you don't have really good middle management and oversight is the ability to acknowledge like, yes, I know that you are working those extra hours.

[00:11:51] Kelly: I know that I'm asking more of you. And it's seen and it's appreciated and it's valued. And again, of course that eventually needs to show up. When possible on the financial side, but obviously there's constraints to every business. So at at least that ability of not just, yeah, that's your job, or just do it anyway, or nobody cares or everyone else does it, that can be very deflating and demotivating.

[00:12:10] Kelly: So I think the ability to be seen and recognized and I think that comes as part of the collaboration. Like to me, the word collaboration is. The conversations and the communication that happens and the acknowledgements and having that voice. And I think the other part of that is not necessarily being told how to do every single thing.

[00:12:27] Kelly: I think given the freedom and flexibility to work the way that you want to in order to achieve those outcomes, having that responsibility of. we need this result. How you get there. You have some degree of autonomy on kind of figuring that out. And I think we see that with work from home and, hours and other things like that.

[00:12:46] Kelly: I. And again, there's limitations to what that can look like, but I do think not just simply being given a playbook, given a tool, you have to use this one. These are what we do. These are your price things. These are the hours you have, this is everything. I think that rigidity just kind of creates that, mechanized sort of approach to things, which I think falls flat really quickly.

[00:13:04] Kelly: I think you need to have people that are bought in and creative can see the fruits of their labor. and again, can be seen and heard and acknowledged in the good and the bad times. and then supported. I think also the ability to let people raise their hands and say, look, I'm, overworked.

[00:13:18] Kelly: I'm, drowning in this. I need help. I have to push these deadlines. And again, sometimes that can be acknowledged and say, okay, what can we do? How can we help? And that feels like, okay, I'm not trapped in this. Someone cares. And in the worst case scenario, you're like. There's actually nothing we can do about it right now.

[00:13:33] Kelly: It's, again, at least not shutting it down or at least not dismissing it as not above and beyond. And, I acknowledge that that's, you know, very sort of rainbows and sprinkles approach to things. But I do think there's an element of that collaboration and, you know, that's that cliche element when people say, this is a big red flag when.

[00:13:49] Kelly: Company say, oh, we're like a family here, and all of that. and I think that that terminology has gotten a bad rap in the way that it's been used. 'cause it can also be weaponized. But the core of why it was said, if you really think about it, I think is we care. We're here, we're listening. We wanna support.

[00:14:03] Kelly: We're not just trying to extract every last piece of value and squeeze blood outta the stone from you until you know, until we don't need you anymore. And that's kind of where that. juxtaposition has, come from of no, like you're family until you're dispensable. And so it's this red flag thing and, and I get where that comes from, but I think the heart of why that was said for a long time is that that empathy and that care of these are human beings, it's a lot of hours.

[00:14:25] Kelly: It's hard work. Everything we have is off of the back of their efforts. And so always keeping that at the forefront, or at least that's part of the equation, acknowledgement, I think becomes really important.

[00:14:35] Todd: So I have a short story to help illustrate a point you made about the type of people who have the autonomy to get stuff done that could easily go the other way and they could just not do anything, or they

[00:14:46] Kelly: could get that personality.

[00:14:47] Kelly: Hiring is an incredibly important part of the equation.

[00:14:50] Todd: Yeah. So I have a short story. I'm gonna just repeat here. I, I shared it with you last week and, but then I'm gonna juxtapose that to a conflict. , so the short story is, , my daughter, whom you know, is a college student, , came home for the summer, , got her first restaurant job as a hostess, right?

[00:15:07] Todd: So she stands there at the doorway. She seats people at tables and brings her menus and stuff like that, and, takes care of them. She's a hostess. She's never done this before. It's her first job. On her fifth shift. So two shifts were training, so she was on her third actual shift. There was another hostess as well said, two hostesses on staff.

[00:15:26] Todd: And there was a slowdown period. And this other hostess has been there longer than her, was hired a while ago. , And they were at the hostess stand and it was slow. And so my daughter went to her manager and said, Hey, can I do something else? Can I bus tables, can I. carry out food or whatever?

[00:15:42] Todd: and her manager was like, yeah, for sure. Like, here's how you can help bus tables. And then, , if you want to, , you know, bring off food, here's how you're gonna have to be able to do that. I'll show you real quick and then hopefully you can do it. And so in between seating guests, she was busting tables and expediting food, and the other hostess never did anything.

[00:16:03] Todd: She just stood at the hostess stand. So there are those two different kinds of workers, right? There are workers who are gonna be motivated to just do more. , We have a saying in our family winners, do one more. and so I think we've been fortunate to find those kinds of people. And it's not like we have some tests in our hiring process that allows us to find those kind of people.

[00:16:23] Todd: But that's the color to your point, is that we have been able To find a lot of great people like that. Now, here's where I have the conflict. Those people are, the, a talent group that we hire, which means we pay top dollar.

[00:16:37] Kelly: Or even if they're not, they're gonna quickly get to that tier very, very fast.

[00:16:40] Todd: Yeah. Or if they're not, and they have the aspiration to get to that tier very fast and they wanna work in a very high touch, peer-to-peer accountable environment, they'll sink or swim. Right. They'll get there or they, won't. Fortunately for us, we have a group of all A players.

[00:16:55] Todd: , But that's expensive. And here's the example of this. So the last week I had to meet with our benefits broker and go over our annual enrollment for August open enrollment, which every company goes to. , Our healthcare benefit plans are going up 22% year over year. That's. Higher than we've been. It's been going up like 14, 15, 16%, 22%.

[00:17:19] Todd: A lot of other things that our operations go up, salaries go up and all that kind of stuff. And then I think about as a business, we're not raising our prices to our clients.

[00:17:29] Kelly: industry that races to the bottom.

[00:17:31] Todd: especially not in an industry where lots of media agencies will compete on fee.

[00:17:36] Todd: . So this is another question.

[00:17:38] Kelly: Perceived fee. That's an important distinction. Perceived fee.

[00:17:41] Todd: well definitely. 'cause we know under the hood lots of people charge more, , or take more. , But this is a conflict in that sort of category of scale, right? Like first of all, it's hard enough to deliver on the brand promise that we deliver on.

[00:17:55] Todd: It's made harder by only hiring a talent who. Demand, rightfully so, the best pay and benefits that, you can afford to give them with a culture and an environment that allows them to thrive and they want to thrive in, but yet that's the most expensive endeavor. we can encounter, and as a company, our margins can continue to shrink year after year, after year, because there's just simply no way to recover that.

[00:18:20] Todd: So this goes back to the scale question. How do we scale this, right? Like, can we ever do this? On a larger scale, are we really only a boutique indie company now that can just really service people that want to pay for an ultra premium service and output? , And I would argue the output matters more than anything, but the service matters too, because that's what keeps us in business and with our clients as long as we've had them anyway.

[00:18:46] Todd: That's the conflict that I have is it's expensive to do what we're doing. To keep the culture what it is. , Let me add one more point. One other thing that came up in the survey in this section of what people want us to start doing more is more, . Sort of social interactions, whether that be virtual, which I thought was funny because people poo-pooed the virtual happy hours and all that stuff during COVID.

[00:19:11] Todd: Maybe that's coming back, but more social interactions and I'm thinking, well, we have people all over the country and all over the world. How do we do that? beyond an annual retreat? We fly everyone into a location for multiple days, which is a massive expense. How do we do that more often?

[00:19:26] Todd: But that's what people want, or that's what the survey says that our team wants is more social interaction. So we have to figure out how to do that. Yeah, and that's an expensive endeavor.

[00:19:36] Kelly: Yeah. I mean, I take that as a good sign that. the people that work for us like each other, which is also a very good sign, I think goes into again, a better culture and, and working well.

[00:19:44] Kelly: Which it's, it's funny to say that tongue in cheek, but fostering that also matters in collaboration and the ability to think about others and empathize with others and fill in and get energized to do things. , Going back to your first point of it, just to touch on sort of the. Self-starter or sort of the, person who seeks out, you know, opportunity.

[00:20:02] Kelly: , It's funny that you say that. 'cause I would say that in all of my career of hiring and, bringing people on and, and we have gotten really lucky in finding those I, I've sort of narrowed it down into, there's, generally one significant. Characteristic trait that immediately flags me whether or not someone's gonna work out or not.

[00:20:19] Kelly: And it is usually that trait of when someone's not specifically laying out what the expectation of you, what's needed, what the process is, all of that. Sometimes you are getting lost in the shuffle because people are busy and doing their own thing and not everyone can give you their full attention to onboard.

[00:20:37] Kelly: Do you sit back and wait, or do you take chances? Do you find, do you seek, do you look to draw value? Does it matter to you if you're just sort of sitting and being like, okay, well I'll, I'll do what's asked of me when it comes time to be asked or no, like, I'm here, I have value, I wanna show my worth.

[00:20:52] Kelly: are you the kind of that go getter? I don't think I'm saying anything new, but. That has singularly been, the thing that I've always seen is, is if I hear about a new employee just being like, Hey, they're not really doing anything, and telem ask them, in my mind, pretty sure that person's not going to last.

[00:21:09] Kelly: And the alternative to that is people are taking chances, you know, maybe not doing everything right but like proactively going for something. And those things, that's usually like, okay, we can. mold that person and make sure that they get a skill set and they're, gonna kind of figure that out and go far.

[00:21:22] Kelly: , Second to that would be a lot of the emotional intelligence. The ability to adapt to different personalities and, you know, know people's strengths and weaknesses and accept their strengths and, find ways around their weaknesses versus just getting upset when someone doesn't do everything perfectly.

[00:21:37] Kelly: 'cause nobody does That's another area that I think is really important is, you know, appreciating what you get from people and being able to work around the things that you don't, and generally you'll get the best outta people that way. So it's more of a skillset than you want, or that you think? , So yeah, I mean, I don't know.

[00:21:51] Kelly: the whole thing about the costs and, and the scale and the growth, it's a hard one because. You know, I think the way that most bigger agencies tend to use that to the detriment of the lower end clients is the a talent. Generally, that's why you get a lot of turnover. They get sucked up into the next biggest client.

[00:22:07] Kelly: It's kind of a, vacuum that, once you get someone really good on your account, if you're one 10th of the next biggest client, that talent's either going to get another offer somewhere else, , and leave, or they're probably gonna get pulled into the account that's just worth more than yours.

[00:22:21] Kelly: . And that happens a lot. And so I don't know how you manage the growth because having really seasoned talent, a talent that's on your business year after year after year is very valuable. I mean, I think the biggest answer is you gotta grow with your clients. You gotta create that growth, and they've gotta have reason to be able to, you know, be spending more and affording more.

[00:22:39] Kelly: , In an ideal world, not every client fits. I mean, size of market and stability is also a lot of value there. So. It's definitely something to think about is how do you continue to foster and grow that talent to be able to deliver that service over time when their skillset and what they're offering value-wise to your business is going up.

[00:22:58] Kelly: So should you be paying more for what you are getting more in year five of someone than you were in year one. Or you should be anyway, as people evolve and grow. That's why people get raises 'cause they get more valuable. Right. So, , these are all things that are interesting to think about. I think it's the most interesting just to say these things out loud because I don't know that I.

[00:23:18] Kelly: On average, most people take the step back to really think about those nuances and those specifics of it. I think it's usually just, no, I, I pay my agency x, I pay my employees y it grows this way, it turns over. It's just a lot of, it's just taken for granted the way it is and not sitting back and be like, does that, pass the logic test?

[00:23:36] Kelly: Does it make sense? if you were a brand and you had an agency. If you genuinely had a really solid, skilled team, let's call it 10 people that were killing it for you, and you had those same people for let's say 5, 6, 7 years, would it really make sense to pay them the same amount in year six or seven as you were in year one?

[00:23:58] Kelly: I mean, you would've think you were getting way more value out of that team and what they've learned and their expertise, because consequently, if that was an internal team, you certainly wouldn't be paying them the same, like they would've grown and expanded and, gone up with that. So it's interesting when you start to think about it in that, juxtaposition, it's kind of like the analogy we've used in the past where, when you're hiring an agency and you're comparing that race to the bottom of like, I'll do it for this price, I'll do it for this price.

[00:24:22] Kelly: It's weird when you think about you wouldn't do that if you were hiring A CMO and you're like the CMO that's willing to drop their salary. That would cause more of a question to you of like, why are you willing to do this work for less than, you know, market rate or averages? But for some reason that thought process doesn't trigger when you talk about fees and agencies.

[00:24:41] Kelly: So.

[00:24:41] Todd: Yeah, it hasn't, , materialized that way yet. , Alright, so I have a final question for you to, one that I get asked more often than not around, Hey, you know, if you got this designation as, you know, best places to work or whatever, I get asked by other CEOs or whatever, like, oh, what is it about your company?

[00:25:00] Todd: Or what is it about? What you do that, you know, largely earns you that, or why is your turnover so little, , on your teams? And there's a couple of things that always bubble up to the top, which is really trust and empathy. , those were hard things to develop in my sort of emotional intelligence toolkit.

[00:25:19] Todd: , Trust probably much more than the empathy part. . So I wanna know from you of those two things, or maybe you had others since we set out to build this particular company on our own and going through COVID and all the virtual remote work, what are the two or three or one thing that was the hardest for you?

[00:25:41] Todd: And you and I are age wise, a decade apart, different workforce, different generation. you know, I think my fears are different than maybe yours 'cause you're a younger generation. You were more in tune with virtual work or working from home or things like that. But I'm curious, and I don't think I've ever asked you what have been your biggest fears about just all the evolution of work in the last five to six, seven years?

[00:26:06] Todd: I guess go back prior to COVID, when we started this company in June of 2018. What did you fear most about harnessing a workforce?

[00:26:14] Kelly: I have a couple that come to mind. I mean, personally, one of the hardest things for me was just letting go of ownership of a lot of the work and the delegation and, especially like at the higher end, like strategy stuff and bringing in and not having more ownership of that and, spreading that out.

[00:26:28] Kelly: , You know, as the different platforms that I felt really comfortable in having other people be more the go-to experts and things like that. And so just kind of the, evolution and staying up with it and kind of taking more of a, a higher approach versus knowing everything in the weeds. , It's something that I've had to evolve quite a bit around.

[00:26:45] Kelly: . I mean, I do think a lot of the, like I have noticed that the hiring process when it's gone virtual and, more spread out is significantly harder. I would say our hit rate on hiring when we ran agencies that were all in office and in-person and, did those interviews, I, we've very rarely had anyone that didn't work out, that dropped dramatically, right.

[00:27:03] Kelly: At COVID. I think it's recovered a decent amount since, but that's been an interesting evolution is. You can ask the right questions and you can get a feel via Zoom, but it's just not the same as being in an office and face to face and across from people and really getting that sense of. who someone is.

[00:27:18] Kelly: And, again, I think that comes down to the intangibles, right? It's sure I can read a resume, I can look at a skillset, but all that's trainable and teachable. It's personality is very, very hard to truly gauge and understand. , So much easier to say the right things that it is to spend weeks and weeks doing the right things afterwards.

[00:27:36] Kelly: And so that's been hard is, really just how do you get to get a sense of that personality and those motivators and those. Things that are really, why is someone making a move? What are they looking for? What's gonna matter to them? how are they gonna gel with different personalities?

[00:27:51] Kelly: I think that's the other thing with here that I would say is my third thing is. It's just the differences of personalities and how they mesh together. Work styles being very different. , You know, we've had a lot of different people that have very amazing strengths, but most often your great, great strengths, I'm a great example of this.

[00:28:07] Kelly: Your really good strengths generally come with some pretty obvious weaknesses that offset that. that's just the way that it is. And so the ability to not get frustrated by the weakness or appreciate the strengths enough to. Find a workaround for the weakness, I think is a really good skillset to get when you're getting really a talent, high-end people that do the things they do great.

[00:28:28] Kelly: It's very rare that that comes without a few things that they don't do very well, that you have to kind of adapt to. , And that's been one of the things I think is really interesting to kind of navigate and figure out.

[00:28:37] Todd: That is an interesting point and very true. Alright, we'll leave it there. And, , we'll be.

[00:28:43] Todd: Onto continuing things while we try to keep people happy, keep clients happy. , I think, again, you know, the key words that always pop up are collaboration, empathy, and trust. So if you're a business leader or if you're on a team out there, if you're not sensing the empathy of, you know, be treated the way you want to treat people, or treat people the way you want to be treated.

[00:29:04] Todd: That saying has never gone away, or you're not in a high touch collaboration environment and you wanna be , or you just don't feel trusted. Probably need to look for another organization to be in. We're

[00:29:17] Kelly: seen or heard or matter. I think again, is cheesy or cliche, whatever word you wanna say. I think, being acknowledged and seen.

[00:29:23] Kelly: Nobody likes being taken for granted. Nobody likes. Having hard things asked of them and feel like when they show up and do it, that it just was again taken for granted. I think that's a word that is an incredibly dangerous word and really in any relationship in life, but it applies as much into work as anything else.

[00:29:40] Todd: Yep. You're right, and you're very good at acknowledging. Our team. And if you're leading a company out there and you want to get awards, like best Places to work, , they are not easy to get. There are thousands and thousands of companies that apply to these. So, , it's not always easy to get. , But I would say you need to lead with a lot of the stuff we've talked about today and empower your teams to work the way we have.

[00:30:02] Todd: And, , you'll probably see yourself winning one of those. So thanks for being my partner, Kelly. It's, , good to. Be working with you in this environment, although it's not an easy one, but at least every day, you and I know that we can start and end our day feeling like we are doing all the right things,

[00:30:19] Kelly: appreciation for all the people that let us do what we do.