Transcript
WEBVTT
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Hey, this is James, the
founder of sweet fish media. If you've
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listened to me to be growth for
a while, you probably have an idea
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of what we're passionate about. Loving
people really well, a constant pursuit of
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learning and inspiring people to own their
careers. With all the craziness happening with
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this virus, we are incredibly fortunate
to be in the business of podcasting.
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So many BB brands are looking for
alternatives to their inperson events that are being
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canceled, and our business is growing
as a result. Please don't miss hear
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me on this, because I'm not
saying this to Brag. It is heartbreaking
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the economic impact this is having on
so many businesses. But being in the
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business of podcasting, the demand for
what we do has increased and because of
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that we're looking to hire really talented
people to help us serve that demand.
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So if you like what we're all
about it sweet fish and you're looking for
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a great career opportunity, hit us
up. There's a link in the show
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notes where you can apply today.
I'm really looking forward to meeting you.
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Welcome back to be to be growth. I'm looking lyles with sweet fish media.
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Today is another episode in our behind
the curtain series. We've been having
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more contributors, more folks here on
the sweet fish team joining these today it's
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me and our founder and CEO,
my good Buddy James carberry. James has
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it going to day, man,
I'm doing well. Madam. I'm excited
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to talk about this topic. This
is something that actually just I was walking
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around the neighborhood last night and was
listening to the at the table podcast with
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Patrick Sione and they started talking about
this idea and I was like, oh
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my gosh, this is brilliant.
So I instantly put a couple of these
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time blocks on my calendar because I
think we're going to start, not I
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think we're going to start doing this
with sweetish. I'm going to start doing
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this with sweetish starting next week.
So I don't know when this is going
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to go live. It may have
already happened by the time people are listening
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to this, but I'm really excited
at about this openoffice concept. Yeah,
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man, so we're going to be
talking about how you can recreate kind of
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the feeling and some of the advantages
of an in person open office even while
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you're working remotely, and Leverage Zoom
or whatever sort of conference call tool that
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you're using on a daytoday basis.
So tell us a little bit about what
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you heard, kind of what it
sparked for you when you heard this on
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Patrick's podcast. Man. Yeah,
so Patrick was talking about the need for
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us to use zoom as not restricting
the use of zoom just for meetings.
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So he said, if it was
himmors cohost. That said, if you're
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just using zoom and at the top
of every one of your zoom calls it's
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the heading is a specific agenda item
or a, you know, measurable result
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that you're trying to achieve, then
you're probably not getting the most out of
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zoom. And then they started talking
about this concept of opening up the floor
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and, you know, just saying
hey, I'm going to be working this
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afternoon on a couple projects. Here's
my zoom link if anybody wants to hop
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on and, you know, and
work with me. And I thought,
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oh my gosh, this is so
brilliant. It's fantastic, I think for
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you know, the entire world is
working remote right now, but for us,
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obviously, we work remote all the
time and I love this idea because
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there's all of this negative talk around
the open office and I, and I
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totally get it, like it.
It makes perfect sense why in an open
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office format productivity plummets because it's just
a constant barrage of distractions. But in
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a virtual environment we literally have no
distractions to the point where we can feel
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isolated. Right. So I'm on
calls all day, I'm talking to people
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all day long, so I don't
necessarily feel it as much, but for
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our writers, for our producers,
for other people on our team, I
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mean they're heads down doing heads down
focused work for pretty much the entire week
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and now that we're all quarantine,
we can't get out at all. Opening
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something like this up and starting to
do this to where, you know,
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I've next Thursday. I'm just going
to put my zoom link. I'm going
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to tell the team on Monday like
Hey, Thursday, from one to five
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PM Eastern, I'm going to be
working and I've got a couple projects that
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that aren't necessarily phone calls. I
think I've got one phone call in there.
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So obviously, like I'll mute myself
on zoom and go and take my
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phone call during that time. But
I'm just going to I'm putting it as
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an open so it's in my google
calendar, the calendar and by it's just
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a four hour time block, but
I've left it open so if people who
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are using my calendari link, they
can still block time during that block.
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Other you know, other people are
operations assistant can still put time on there
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if things need to get put on
there. But it's essentially just kind of
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creating this feeling of Hey, I'm
going to go to the conference room and
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work on some stuff if anybody wants
to join me in there, and I'm
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really excited about that. We've this
is something we can we can implement along
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after this virus is done, because
we don't have any intention of having a
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physical office ever. But I think
controlling the open office is a powerful idea
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because the cross but, like you
had mentioned, something that Ethan View from
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Bomb Im talks about a lot is
the cross pollen nation of ideas. So
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when you're in the same room and
you're having this is something linconi talked about
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in the podcast to there's a difference
between having like happy hour conversation where you're
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intentionally not talking about work, but
we're you're with colleagues, but he said,
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I think we should have more conversation
around the business. It's not necessarily
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focused on a specific topic, but
we're talking about work with our coworkers and
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so we're maybe we're talking about that
client that we're having a hard time with
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or we're talking about a win that
we that we got. And I think
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by opening up an environment like with
an open zoom room where everybody is just
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working, I could imagine a setting
where maybe our creative director or customer to
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Director of customer experience, myself and
maybe two of our riders are all in
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this room and we've got a writer
that's that on your self and she's like,
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Hey, I'm writing for this,
you know, I'm running for this
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client. What are your thoughts on
this, this and this? Well,
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that could open up a whole slew
of like Oh, I never even realize
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that that was something that you had
to think about in the writing process of
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our articles. We need to create
a process that alleviates you having to make
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that decision or something else, you
know, whatever the whatever the issue is.
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But by not being around each other, we just we don't we're not
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privy to to seeing those kind of
things because we're so isolated in the work
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that we do outside of meeting things
that have a very specific purpose. So
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what are your thoughts on this?
This is a new idea. Obviously,
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I had just heard about it last
night. Yeah, you just told me
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about it like ten minutes before we
hit record and I was like, man,
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this is really cool and something that
kind of clicked for me as you
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were just talking there. And James, you know you and I have a
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weekly oneonone right, and I think
we've gotten better at structuring those. Hey,
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let's add stuff to the list.
I've got a list of things that
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I need to talk to you that
I didn't necessarily need to ping you about
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and distract you in the middle of
a Tuesday or whatever, but timely.
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And so we've created some more structure
and rhythm on our team, on the
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leadership team and throughout the team for
one on ones. But at the same
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time, as you were talking about, like the conversations that can come up
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naturally. You know, I've mentioned
my dog that co offices with me a
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lot Mac here on the show as
I'm walking him, usually at night after
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the kids have gone to bed.
You and I have had some of our
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most productive conversations where I just called
you and it was like hey, let's
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just talk about the day a little
bit, and we end up talking for
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forty five minutes or an hour about
how we could shift our service or different
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things that we need to address or
those sorts of things. And usually those
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calls don't start out with a specific
agenda of James, let's go through this
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checklist. I I'm going to call
you at thirty when I'm walking the dog
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and we're going to go boom,
boom boom through this bullet pointed list.
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But it has meandered along with my
walk with the dog, me entering along
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the Sidebog as me entered into some
really great stuff. The other thing that
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I think for folks you do a
really good job of communicating. You know
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where we're going, things that are
that need to be the whole team needs
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to know about right now. But
I imagine there are a lot of teams
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right now where leadership and the entire
organization is not used to working remotely and
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so doing something like this, as
well some other things, to proactively communicate
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with the entire organization, can help
people feel more connected to what's going on,
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more informed on what's going on with
leadership and therefore feel more safe and
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secure, and the more secure you
can make your team feel right now probably
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the better. Do you want to
speak to that? You know, kind
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of from CEO Perspective Right now?
Yeah, so being available is something that
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I think I am learning in the
last couple months even there's a difference between
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saying that you're available. So that's
a passive approach for me as a CEO
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to say, Oh, I've got
an open door, you can come to
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me any time. But I was
talking with Ryan from our team about this
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maybe about a month ago and he
was like, James, it's it's really
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easy for you to say that.
It's easy for you to tell the entire
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team. And we don't have a
big time. I mean we've got twenty
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people, so it's not huge,
but it's real easy for you to to
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tell these twenty people, Hey,
you can reach out to me anytime,
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you can call me, you can
slack me, you can text me,
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you can whatever. But what you've
got to understand is the mental work that
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it takes for someone to, you
know, the equivalent of get up out
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of their desk, walk down the
Hallway, walk into your office, because
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they're probably not coming to talk to
you about something that they think you're doing.
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Well, I mean they're they're probably
got an issue, whether either with
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you or with a CO worker or
with, you know, something they fundamentally
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disagree on with you know, are
pricing or a product that we're bringing to
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market or whatever. So it's not
a comfortable situation for them and there's a
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lot of friction for them. So
it's easy for me as a CEO to
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think, Oh, I'm checking the
box, I'm open, you know,
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I'm available. I tell our people
all the time you know they can,
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they can come and talk to me. But we're doing something like this,
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actually says, Hey, I'm going
to be in this zoom room and if
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anybody wants to work with me,
cut like, come on in like that's
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me taking a step toward them so
that they can then take a step toward
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me, as opposed to what I've
been doing, which is, Hey,
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I'm available, and I do you
know I do. We do a weekly
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video where our entire leadership team.
Most weeks our entire leadership team puts up
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a video on slack and just updates
the team on their department. So I've
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been doing a lot of updates throughout
this pandemic about how the business is doing,
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getting very granular and specific. These
are the customers we lost this week.
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These are the customers we gained this
week. We're still on an upward
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trajectory. We're very fortunate, being
in the business that we're in, that
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the business is still growing. But
keeping the team updated and letting them know,
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hey, we lost three customers last
week, we picked up for new
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ones and a big renewal. So
we're still on an upward trajectory. Letting
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everybody know that as of right now, we are not having to look at
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any sort of layoffs or anything like
that. Just keeping them at ease.
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So I can push that kind of
communication to them and try to be as
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open as I can. But by
doing this kind of open office thing,
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it's just that one additional level where
I'm now meeting them halfway. Another thing
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I'm trying to do more of is
just proactively reaching out to individuals on our
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team. Like I said, we
have twenty people, not two hundred.
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So right now I can make notes
to myself to say hey, I just
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need to be checking in with people
via text message. Hey, how you
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doing? Like, how is it, you know, being cooped up?
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I know you've got two kids.
How are your kids doing with all this?
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And so I'm taking a motion toward
them, as opposed to what I
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think a lot of CEOS, and
this was me a month ago, you
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can check the box of thinking you're
being a good leader just by communicating to
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the team that you're available, when
you're not actually taking action toward them.
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It's a pretty passive to say hey, I'm available and it's not empathetic to
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how difficult it is for the person
on the other end of that to go
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have a conversation with the CEO.
Because to me I'm just me, I'm
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just a dude. I'm just a
guy that decided to start a business half
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a decade ago and fortunately have brought
a lot of really smart people along the
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way with me and it's grown.
But to other people, to people that
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have, you know, just joined
the business in the last six months,
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a year, like it's intimidating because
we are fully remote. They don't interact
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with me a lot. They don't
know that if I ever see them in
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person, my first instinct is going
to be to hug him. I'm glad
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you went there because that's exactly what
I was going to say it. They
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haven't gotten at James Carberry hug yet. Yeah, so that's just a part
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of my personality. Like I'm very
open and very inviting. I mean we
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have a guest room at our house
and before this virus, like, we
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basically had somebody in that guest room
every weekend since we've had the house for
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the last year and a half.
But that's me assuming that they know things
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about me that they just can't know
because in the nature of how we work.
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so by doing things like texting them, by doing things like this open
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office idea, putting up as Zoom
Lincoln, saying Hey, I'm going to
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be working from from this, you
know, on from this link, on
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some different projects, from one to
five on Thursday. Anybody's welcome to join
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me. Would love to jam.
And then the conversations that are going to
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come out of that, I'm going
to learn things about how our people are
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working, like what are people are
working on, what different projects are doing.
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It's going to give me insight as
a as a CEO, that I
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otherwise would not get apart from doing
something like this. So that's what I'm
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really excited about to do. You
said it so well and I love the
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advice that you're given for other CEOS, founders and just anyone who's leading a
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team. Like you said, you
can think that hey, just tactically,
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logistically, I'm available. They have
they have me on slack, they have
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my phone number, they have this, this, this, but it's not
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just about the logistics, it's about
the emotions and and the motion. I
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like the way you said it,
taking emotion toward them so they don't have
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to go as far to get to
you. So you know, kind of
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the way I summarize that this idea
of tactically using a zoom or Uber Conference
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or whatever conference and call system you
use, creating a block on your calendar,
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having a zoom link, sharing that
with your team and saying Hey,
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I'm going to be working here,
kind of like like you said, like
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Hey, I'm taking my laptop into
the conference room. Anybody that wants to
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work in there so we can hang
out together and maybe talk about what we're
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working on. There's really kind of
three key benefits, as we've been talking
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about it, especially right now.
You reduce isolation, but I love the
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way that it it does it in
just in general for fully remote teams like
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ourselves, because I have noticed,
if as we've gotten together more with out
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at work agenda, that you've got, you know, happy hours. We
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did a baby shower remotely here recently. That's kind of on one end of
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the spectrum. And then you have
your typical hey let's show up for a
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thirty minute call, we have an
agenda, something in between there to reduce
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the isolation and have that feeling of
community. So that's one. Two,
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as you said, it can be
a tool for leadership to get more connected
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and therefore get more feedback and help
the team feel more secure. And then
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the great conversation, as we quoted
Ethan. I'm sure he's okay with US
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quoting his offline comment there, the
cross pollination of ideas. He was sharing
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that with us, I think,
when they were talking about kind of their
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semi remote but mostly in office culture
at bomb, you know, obviously prepandemic.
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So reducing isolation, getting leadership more
connected and people more connected to leadership,
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and then the great conversations that can
improve the business. Those are my
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three. Do you have anything else
to add to that? Yes, so
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rap around the connectedness piece. I
think what that connectedness does is it builds
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trust, and I'm a big proponent
because of all that I've learned from Patrick
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Lyncione and all of his books,
is that if you can have trust amongst
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your team, you're going to grow. Like trust is the foundation for everything,
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and so I think by you taking
motion as a leader or toward your
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people, proactively texting them, doing, you know, an open office zoom
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call like this, you know,
one or two times a week, I
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think that that's going to be what
leads to their being trust and when people
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trust you they can feel like they
can come to you with hard things,
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that you, as a leader,
can take that and make the decision that
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you need to make. But the
fact that you have more data points now.
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So the more the more people that
trust you on your team, the
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more available data you're going to have
for how you're moving the business for forward.
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So that was that was one piece. They're the other thing that I
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wanted to to note here was I
want to acknowledge that open office, the
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open office thing, can be a
distraction. So what we're not prescribing is,
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hey, you should recreate an open
office all the time and just have
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a constant zoom room that everyone can
access forty hours a week, all throughout
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the week, and that way it
just is all come by all and that
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you guys are all in the same
room. This is going to be these
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four hours or five hours or ten
hours or whatever you decide to do.
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Expect less, quote unquote, productivity. Like I know that the projects.
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I've got to carefully select the projects
that I'm working on during that block of
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time because I've just got to expect
that I'm not going to be as productive
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with that time in the way that
I typically think about productivity. But having
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these kind of side conversations like what
you and I have whenever you're walking your
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dog around the neighborhood at night,
those are incredibly productive. We've made significant
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change just to the business. We've
changed our pricing because of those calls.
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We've gone after you know, we've
developed new products because of those calls.
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We've done a lot of things because
of the calls. They've been extremely effective
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and productive, but it's been productive
in a different type of it's a different
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type of productive, one that's not
expected, it's not necessarily planned, and
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so go into that knowing, Hey, you know, we're not jumping in
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head first and doing this all of
the time. But we're going to do
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it. We're going to start doing
it once a week. We might open
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up a couple blocks, you know, throughout the week. We might start
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doing it with teams. So we
say hey, Friday afternoons, all of
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our producers work together. We might
integrated into on boarding. So we might
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say hey, we've so we just
we just hired a new writer. We
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might say hey, for your first
months, we want you to be working
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alongside another writer on our team.
So you're going to be working with emily,
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you know, Monday, Wednesday and
Friday, and you're going to work
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with Tim on Tuesday and Thursday.
And then the next week you're going to
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flip it so your entire eighth hour
day you and another writer are going to
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be on the same zoom call.
You're not going to be talking the entire
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time, obviously you're writing, but
any questions you have you're just one mute
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button away from saying Hamilee. Sorry, you know I don't want to bug
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you, but I've got a quick
question here. What how do you guys
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typically do this? Now again,
you've got to account for the fact that
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in that on boarding scenario, emily
is going to be less productive. So
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we cannot expect emily to produce the
same amount of work, work that she
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produced, apart from, you know, working next to our new writer or
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producer, whatever the role is.
So you have to account for that and
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I want to make sure that I
say that because my my instinct is to
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be like, oh, yeah,
everybody can work together and we expect the
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same level level of productivity. That's
not the case. But there are lots
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of different ways you can do this. Doing it amongst teams, doing it
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where leadership team invites everybody else on
the team to work together, like you
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can sis and ice in a lot
of ways. But I think just thinking
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about zoom just as a meeting tool
and not a tool like this, where
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you can have this type of collaboration
and this kind of cross pollination of your
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team, I think is a miss. I think we've got to be looking
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at zoom bigger and more of a
human interaction platform and less of a meeting
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platform. Dune, I love the
way that you said that. They're a
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couple of things that you said.
Make sure that you limit the time.
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We're not saying flip it on for
all forty hours. Think about productivity differently
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and then kind of what you are
alluding to their you know, if you
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are setting up one of these inviting
people to come work with you, maybe
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you've got some some heads down work
that you're not on calls, but not
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necessarily super deep work where you've got
to be really concentrated and you're going to
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get frustrated by kind of zooming in
and out right like if I'm doing work,
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you know, at my kitchen island
and I, you know, tell
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my family and till the kids like, Hey, I'm going to do a
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little work. It might be some
light email or something like that, but
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I'm not like trying to focus on
like solving a real deep problem, because
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that's just not going to work in
and same thing goes for this application.
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Man. Well, this is really
cool. I am excited to start implementing
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this here with our Tam and I
hope folks get some value out of this.
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I think it's a different idea.
I think it's obviously very timely with
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more folks who are not used to
working remote right now. James, if
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anybody listening to this, if they're
new to the show, they're not connected
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with you. What's the best way
for them to stay connected with you or
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reach out, talking about availability and
all that sort of stuff. Man.
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00:21:25.579 --> 00:21:29.140
Yeah, so superactive on Linkedin,
just James Carver and Linkedin. I'm on
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Instagram to don't do as much there. We're doing a lot more as a
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company on instagram. So check us
out sweet fish media there. And then
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I don't know that we've talked about
it yet. We probably need to do
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an entire episode about it, but
we just revamped our entire website, so
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we're out of the stone ages now. We had we had the same website
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for going on half a decade and
we finally overhauled it. So I'm really
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00:21:49.359 --> 00:21:52.200
excited about that. So if you
have not been to sweet fish mediacom in
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00:21:52.279 --> 00:21:56.559
a while, go go check it
out there. They you'll see the direction
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that the business is going and really
becoming a meet a company as opposed to
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just to service provider. So really
excited about that. But would love to
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00:22:04.309 --> 00:22:07.109
connect with anybody and everybody, and
if you haven't already read the book,
333
00:22:07.269 --> 00:22:11.150
make sure to check out the book. Content based networking on audible or Amazon
334
00:22:11.750 --> 00:22:15.630
of it. Man, for anybody
listening to this, I'm not yet connected
335
00:22:15.670 --> 00:22:18.460
with. Just look me up on
Linkedin, just like James, is where
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00:22:18.460 --> 00:22:22.420
I'm most active. My last name
is L Y elies. Pretty easy,
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00:22:22.460 --> 00:22:26.500
easy to find if you just search
linked in for Logan Lyles. As always,
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00:22:26.700 --> 00:22:29.579
thank you so much for listening,
everybody. James, this has been
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00:22:29.619 --> 00:22:32.609
a great conversation. Thanks for bringing
this up. I'm glad we shared it
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00:22:32.730 --> 00:22:36.970
with with everybody today and excited to
dive in with our team with this new
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application, a zoom man. Yeah, and a lot of this, I
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00:22:38.690 --> 00:22:42.049
mean this is literally came straight from
Patrick Glenconi and at the table. So
343
00:22:42.130 --> 00:22:45.119
if you're not already listening to the
at the table PODCAST, make sure to
344
00:22:45.200 --> 00:22:49.440
subscribe to that. It's Patrick and
he brings in different co workers, mostly
345
00:22:49.599 --> 00:22:55.200
cody from his team, but just
phenomenal conversations around work. We have very,
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00:22:55.400 --> 00:23:00.789
very similar wise and like are both
at the table, the table group,
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00:23:00.430 --> 00:23:03.589
Patrick's company, and our company has
very similar mission. So if you
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00:23:03.710 --> 00:23:07.789
like this content, you're going to
love at the table absolutely. Man,
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00:23:07.869 --> 00:23:11.789
will make sure to link to Patrick
Glencyony's podcast in the show notes for folks,
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00:23:11.269 --> 00:23:15.059
so definitely go check that out and, as always, everybody, thank
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00:23:15.099 --> 00:23:22.420
you so much for listening. I
hate it when podcasts incessantly ask their listeners
352
00:23:22.460 --> 00:23:26.140
for reviews, but I get why
they do it, because reviews are enormously
353
00:23:26.220 --> 00:23:29.650
helpful when you're trying to grow a
podcast audience. So here's what we decided
354
00:23:29.690 --> 00:23:32.410
to do. If you leave a
review for be to be growth in apple
355
00:23:32.490 --> 00:23:37.410
podcasts and email me a screenshot of
the review to James At sweetfish Mediacom,
356
00:23:37.769 --> 00:23:41.089
I'll send you a signed copy of
my new book, content based networking,
357
00:23:41.369 --> 00:23:44.720
how to instantly connect with anyone you
want to know. We get a review,
358
00:23:44.759 --> 00:23:45.920
you get a free book. We
both win.