Welcome to Contributors Corner, part of the BEATS WORKING podcast, where past show guests come back for a deep dive on a topic to create shared learning.
This month, we tackle a universal challenge—fear, courage, and confidence at work. We all know how paralyzing fear can be, but how do we harness courage to act in a way that serves our best interests, and exactly what is the difference between courage and confidence?
Our contributors are Steve French, Orlando Hampton, Dr. James Bryant, and Kristin Graham.
It’s a fascinating conversation that will leave you better equipped the next time you need the courage to do what you believe is right.
Resources from the episode:
- Our contributors are on LinkedIn! Connect with Steve French, Orlando Hampton, Dr. James Bryant, and Kristin Graham.
- Listen to “Growing Your Business Without Reinventing the Wheel,” our episode with Steve French, here.
- Listen to “How to Win at Work and at Home,” our episode with Dr. James Bryant, here.
- Listen to “Lessons From a Word Nerd. My Journey From Expedia to Amazon and Beyond,” our episode with Kristin Graham, here.
- Learn more about Steve’s company, infomatix, here and catch up with their blog here.
- Learn more about how Dr. Bryant helps others solve the dilemma of work-life balance through his company, Engineer Your Success, here.
- Visit Kristin’s Unlock the Brain website to find video lessons to hack a better work experience and listen to her Fewer Things Better podcast here.
Share Article on Social Media
Transcript
The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.
Speakers: Dr. James Bryant, Kristin Graham, Orlando Hampton, Steve French, and Mark Wright
DR. JAMES BRYANT 00:00
Fear in and of itself is our friend because it wants to keep you safe. So, fear is not the issue. It’s our response to fear becomes the issue. So, what’s driving you? What’s driving your decisions? Is it that you, you know, are you fearful of something bad happening? What’s the driver and what’s going to be your response? So, focusing on our response to fear becomes the thing to do. So, are you going to just simply react, give in? Or are you going to respond in a way that’s going to impact your situation?
MARK WRIGHT 00:35
This is the BEATS WORKING show. We’re on a mission to redeem work – the word, the place, and the way. I’m your host, Mark Wright. Join us at winning the game of work. Welcome to Contributors Corner, part of the BEATS WORKING podcast, where past guests of the show come back for a deep dive on a topic to create shared learning. This month we tackle a universal challenge, fear, courage, and confidence at work. We all know how paralyzing fear can be, but how do you harness courage to act in a way that serves our best interests? And exactly what is the difference between courage and confidence? Our Contributors are Steve French, Orlando Hampton, Dr. James Bryant, and Kristin Graham. It’s a fascinating conversation that will leave all of us better equipped the next time we need the courage to do what we believe is right. Welcome to Contributors Corner. This is where we invite past guests from the BEATS WORKING podcast back to do a deep dive on a topic to create shared learning. So, on the show this month, we have four Contributors joining us, too, are brand new. Steve French is founder and president of Infomatix, Orlando Hampton, chief customer officer and GM of U.S. Operations for Affinity, Dr. James Bryan, CEO of Engineer Your Success, and Kristin Graham. I’ll let Kristin start by, you do so many things, Kristin, and you do them so well. I’ll let you start by introducing who you are and what you do.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 02:08
Hmm. Charm gets you everywhere, as you know. Uh, hi, everyone. I’m Kristin Graham. I’m a recovering corporate executive who went into the entrepreneur space and founded a company called Unlock the Brain where I use, uh, the blend of brain science, habits, and psychology to help people learn how to do fewer things better. Which is also the name of my podcast. Awesome. Dr. James Bryant.
DR. JAMES BRYANT 02:32
Yes, I am Dr. James Bryant, the CEO of Engineer Your Success. We are a executive coaching, consulting, and leadership development firm where we help business owners and senior executives design and live a life where they can win at work and at home.
MARK WRIGHT 02:47
And Steve French.
STEVE FRENCH 02:50
Hey everybody, I’m Steve, I’m an entrepreneur. We have created a unique process called the Infrastructure Formula to help our clients get very clear on where they are now and where they’d like to be three years from now. And we help them double their business in three years or less. So, for us, it’s all about four key pillars. People, process, technology, and profitability. Uh, right people doing the right things at the right time, supported by great technology, and oh, we should actually make some money at the same time.
MARK WRIGHT 03:17
All right, thanks Steve, and Orlando Hampton.
ORLANDO HAMPTON 03:20
Orlando Hampton. Glad to see everybody. I am the chief customer officer at Afiniti. At Afiniti, we use artificial intelligence to actually drive pairing outcomes, uh, mainly between customers and customer service agents, but between chat and chat agents and chat customers, offline parents as well. It’s a simple insight. It’s just that if you pair people randomly, uh, we believe that we can use some intelligence, uh, to actually try to do that in a more optimal way. And so, if you can pair together the right person, you can get a boost to the neighborhood of three to 6%. And if you’re a pretty big enterprise and you’re doing billions of dollars in revenue, that kind of gain could be monumental. So, uh, that’s what we do. We’ve been doing for 15 years. Uh, even though artificial intelligence, uh, seems to have only exploded that last 15 days. So I’ve, I’ve been on both sides of the wave from, you know, completely introducing it to, uh, now, like everyone knows artificial intelligence. My mother is asking me about artificial intelligence, uh, this morning.
MARK WRIGHT 04:20
And I think that’s a good benchmark, Orlando. When your mom asks you about something you know that the entire population in the world knows what you’re talking about. Both Steve and Orlando are first time contributors. It’s so great to have both of you here. And Kristin and James, uh, have been regular contributors. Great to have you as well. And as we mentioned before we hit the record button, we literally have North America covered. Steve is in Eastern Canada. James is in Eastern US, Orlando is in Southeastern US. Kristin and I are in the Northwestern U S. So, it’s so great to have all of you. Well, our topic this month is courage in the workplace. And I’m going to expand that just to maybe just say courage in general. And Steve, uh, suggested this topic after reading a LinkedIn post from Strategic Coach, co-founder Dan Sullivan. So, Steve, as a way to set things up. Why did you feel so strongly that discussing courage would pay dividends?
STEVE FRENCH 05:16
Yeah, I think um, There were a number of reasons but the big one we had a big shift, uh in our business kind of come out of left field uh this past month where uh, we had a huge referral source for new business. Um, and we were rapidly, uh, expanding our business, uh, in such a way that, uh, you know, at the beginning of last year, we were bringing on typically one new client a quarter. Uh, by the summer we were reaching one new client a month. Uh, in December we hit one new client a week, and our goal for this year was to bring on one new client a day. So that was a big shift. Uh, the challenge was, uh, the funding source that we had for that and the referral source that we had for that went away overnight with no advance warning. It basically had four business hours knowledge that, uh, this, uh, referral source was going to go away. And we had an expectation that we had another two and a half years with this referral source. So, dramatically changed, uh, the way our 2024 is going to be shaping up. And I just, I remembered this quote from Dan. Uh, he talked about it in one of his podcasts with Joe Polish. It’s been in a number of his books, but I just love the way that Dan talked about uh, courage. And I thought that it was, uh, it was a good topic for me personally. And I know every time I’ve been open and honest and vulnerable and put it out there to, you know, my co collaborators and coconspirators, uh, I’ve always, gotten great responses back, great support, but also everybody’s got their own story. So, I thought, uh, it would be a great one to, uh, to kick off with.
MARK WRIGHT 07:03
Wow. Steve, thank you for that. And I would love to dig a little deeper onto sort of, you know, the lessons that you’re learning as you’re radically restructuring 2024. But I’d like to start out by reading that post from Dan Sullivan. And Dan really is an icon in the entrepreneurial coaching community. He and Babs Smith, his wife founded Strategic Coach something like 35 years ago, and I know Steve, you have a deep history with that organization, but this is, this was on Dan’s LinkedIn page, and it was such an adorable, I guess you can call it adorable picture of Dan in his army uniform. This is 1965. So, the, uh, I’ll read the quote from the LinkedIn post that Dan wrote, and then we’ll pick it up from there. He says, in 1965, at 21 years old, I was drafted into the U.S. Army, just as the Vietnam War was beginning, and as part of basic training, we had grenade practice. The sergeant who was demonstrating this said, now if you get this right, you get a big bang, and if you get it wrong, you become hamburger. The next morning by the time I got to grenade practice I was very nervous the first sergeant who was in charge asked right off the bat. How many of you are scared? I was the only one who put up my hand. He said Sullivan is the only one I should trust here because the rest of you are scared, and you’re not telling the truth about it. I’d rather have somebody scared and telling me about it and because I trust him, he’s going to be the first person to go down in the pit and throw a grenade. So, I went down into the pit with the instructor, threw the grenade, following his exact instructions, and it was fine. When everyone had finished, the first sergeant gave us a valuable lesson about fear. He said, fear is wetting your pants. Courage is doing what you’re supposed to do with wet pants. And what I took away from that and what I have always remembered is that courage is never comfortable. Courage is often depicted as a person feeling absolutely certain about taking an action in a situation. That’s not courage. That’s confidence. The difference between courage and confidence is that confidence feels good. Courage is doing what you’re supposed to do despite the discomfort and the lack of confidence. And I thought that was just such a beautiful story because you know here’s a guy who is literally a kid drafted into the military put into this situation and he has The courage to raise his hand and say, yeah, I’m scared. And, uh, and what a valuable lesson. Um, who wants to, to just jump in and just basic reactions. And then we can dig deeper into the courage that you’ve all expressed in your careers.
ORLANDO HAMPTON 09:36
Uh, so I read that post by Dan and it was, it was obviously it was, it was powerful, and it was timely because, uh, I obviously didn’t know what was going to happen. I read this post and then two days later, my son’s, uh, eighth birthday, uh, was this past weekend. And I took him to this go karting, uh, place to ride these go karts. And initially he didn’t want to ride. They were, he thought they were too fast. He was a little scared of the situation, but we walked for a while and he decided, you know, maybe I will. I’ll give it a shot. And I remember as we were waiting in line, he looked at me and he said, I’m really scared. He said, but you know, I’m going to try it. I’m going to do it. And you know, Dan’s message resonated with me. So, it was like, in that moment, I said, wow that’s really an important thing, uh, to be able to, you know, talk so transparently about your feelings and, you know, be open to that. And it’s okay to be scared and it’s okay to go ahead and still push forward, even though you’re feeling this fear. And so, you know, it’s interesting cause I don’t know if I would have responded to that the same way without Dan’s message. Just like a couple of days before, right? I may have, like, said something like, you know, don’t be afraid. You know, it’s it’s fine. But I think actually, like learning to embrace that and, and realizing that that’s just part of that’s part of life’s part of challenges. Part of what’s gonna happen at work. Anyone else is you’re gonna have this fear. But actually being able to express that openly and transparently and move forward with it, uh, is just really a powerful thing. So, I, you know, it was powerful when I read it, but it really resonated with me two days later, uh, when I put it to action.
MARK WRIGHT 11:13
And isn’t that just parenting 101 is that, don’t, don’t ignore the feelings. Just say, yeah, I, I, I’ve been scared too. And here, here’s what you do. And man, what a great story, Orlando. Kristin, what about you? What’s your reaction to that?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 11:28
I had a couple. Well, first is that my father was basically the same age. And was in the Air Force during the same time. And there’s also the social conditioning of courage that really comes into play here from, um, gender parameters to workplace cultures. And going back to what Orlando just said, and I love how you said that. Having that awareness to say, I’m scared too, or it’s okay. Instead of saying, don’t be, or it’ll be okay. And one of the first times when I was getting asked to take on a big role in Corporate America, I was confident. I love how you said that confidence is about being comfortable. Uh, confidence feels good. And so, my overachieving Gen X status, I like was ticking off all the boxes doing really, really well being recognized for that. And then I got tapped to go lead a function that I had no business leading. And I remember saying to, to the executive above me, I don’t, I don’t know what I’m doing. And she leaned forward and said, none of us do. And it was the most liberating thing because I’d been playing a part. It’s like being the chorus in the musical and somebody shoves you forward. And knowing that that was the case really freed my brain to be able to then say that to the people that I was leading. I’m not the expert here. You are. Let’s work on this together. Instead of that performance thing that everybody puts on us to be perfect. And I love this topic because we can stop being perfect and start being excellent.
MARK WRIGHT 13:02
That’s fantastic, Kristin. Thank you. James, what’s your reaction?
DR. JAMES BRYANT 13:05
Oh, man. You know, my first reaction was thinking about the job that I had when I first finished my PhD. I went to work for a highway maintenance company and were managing maintenance on roadways and bridges. I happened to be assigned to one of the urban street maintenance projects in Washington, D.C., and we had a project manager. That was there who wasn’t quite the most honest person is what I can say. So here I am, you know, young guy I’m here and I’m looking at this dishonesty. And we had a particular contractor who he was going to scheme or figure out how to cheat this guy out of their money. So somehow, he was going to do something on underhandedly. And I can just remember sitting in that moment, like, okay, what, what do I do? Part of this is the fear of, you know, this person is higher up in the company. I don’t know what’s going on, but there’s another value that’s there that what he’s doing is wrong. Um, and so for me showing courage was leveraging the relationship that I had within the organization, not to tell them the person, but to start to put things in place, to put some protection in for that contractor. Um, and eventually it was, it was able to be resolved where that person wasn’t cheated or swing, you know, whatever, whichever term you want to use, it wasn’t right. So just making sure, stepping up to make sure that that person was treated the in the right way was my way of showing courage in that moment because it was scary. I wasn’t confident I didn’t have the you know, the business jobs. I wasn’t there for a long time, but I knew I had to do what was right and that’s what that story reminds me of.
MARK WRIGHT 14:59
That’s great, James. Steve as you are facing a situation that requires courage, I’d love to drill down a little bit more on sort of the process, the mindset so that others listening can maybe say the next time they are confronted by something scary that they have, like, here’s a step and a step and a step that I can do to face this. So, what’s going through your mind now, Steve, in terms of how you tackle something like this? Is it first asking, what are my values or what, where’s the, what’s the starting point to solving it?
STEVE FRENCH 15:34
You know, I’ve been doing this a long time. So, Infomatix has been around for 20 years. I worked in corporate for a long time before that I’ve been through some major monumental shifts. Um, and the biggest thing that I always go back to is there’s a sense that everything is always going to be okay. You know, if, if you look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I mean, you know, we, I’ve got a warm bed to sleep in. I’ve got, you know, people who love me, I’ve got food, I’ve got, you know, shelter, I’ve got love. I’ve got all of those basic things. I’m going to be okay. So, um you know, the, the faster I can get from the fear state, which tends to be singular, it tends to be isolated, it tends to be, you know, shrinking back. It tends to be all of those things that, you know, you’re, um, you’re not your normal self. The faster you can get to the identifying the options and taking action, that’s where the gold is, right? And all the stories that we were just talking about here, it was about that shift. It was about that shift from stationery to movement. And that’s the thing, as I look back and reflect back over some of those big shifts that I’ve had, the amount of time that it takes me now to go from, oh, this sucks to, okay. I need to take an action. And even if it’s the wrong action, or even if it could be better, I’m better off than I was sitting there doing nothing.
MARK WRIGHT 17:12
Yeah. And how important is it, Steve, to engage others at a time like this?
STEVE FRENCH 17:17
Absolutely invaluable. That’s the secret sauce. The more you talk about it, the more you feel supported, the more you feel validated, the more you can actually talk through some of the ideas that you’re bouncing around inside your head. Cause, you know, again, it’s, it’s just an echo chamber up here when we’re just dealing with a party of one, when we’re sitting here with five other people who, you know, are, you know, nice, supportive, helpful, give some different perspectives. Oh, maybe that’s not a great idea or maybe I tried that and that didn’t work, and here’s why. You know, what about this over here? That’s where uh, those new ideas come, and it helps you iterate much more quickly.
MARK WRIGHT 17:57
What I think is interesting about this whole topic is that the five of us are all here because our ancestors had a really good fear response. And if we’re, if we’re honest, fear is what, you know, fear and reproduction are the two strongest drivers inside human beings. And, and there’s a good reason for that. There’s a genetic reason for that. There’s a biological evolutionary reason for that. And I remember my first job as a legislative correspondent in the state of Idaho. I had a little desk in the basement of the Rotunda in Boise and my job was to cover the legislative session for a public radio station. And I remember seeing debate on bills. And what was interesting is that you knew when a bill was going down, when someone threw out something, it wasn’t necessarily factually going to kill the bill, but from an emotional standpoint, it threw enough doubt into the conversation that people started saying, hmm, yeah, I wonder what happens if, hmm. And you could see as the roll call would be, would be going the votes would switch and shift and you could see that just a tidal wave of fear just up on the the voting board on the wall and, and there it goes it’s done. And maybe they would try again the next session, but fear is such a strong driver.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 19:14
Mark I want to stay with your comment about the driver of fear and I want to take us back to our survival instincts so a lot of us think that um, courage is some immediate choice or an indicator of our character. And I don’t think we give enough credit to our biology. And the fact that our amygdala, its entire design, that’s a fight, flight, freeze, its entire job is to keep us safe. You joked about our ancestors, but the reason we are here is probably because our ancestors were like, I’ll be back in the cave, thanks. So, one of that things is that fear, fear can be a strategy, but now it’s just part of our, um, evolutionary choice. But our amygdala is the most primitive part of our brain, and it’s the one that is all about assessing risk. And I was having this conversation with my 20-year-old son yesterday because he’s always talking and anticipating. Well, what if this happens, then I should do this. And I was trying to get us to can we make a decision and focus on what’s happening today because it becomes such a blocker. But I think with the proliferation of news and social media like we’re driven by kind of fear your point about lawmakers and legislatures and crap voting everything goes into the what ifs instead of the what nows. And what I honor about this group, is the entrepreneurial spirit and the workplace spirit to be able to say, but what if something was better? And so, if our instinct is to say, how can I protect something? There’s also an element to bring forward to say, but what if we can improve something? So, giving the brain credit, but also letting there be room for choice.
MARK WRIGHT 20:50
And it really is the fear of making the wrong choice, right? The fear of consequences that we’re really afraid of. If, if I do this, then oh no, maybe that’ll happen, maybe that’ll happen, maybe that’ll happen. Orlando, I’d love to ask you, you started in call centers as a, as a young man, a teenager, and you got really good at call centers and I’m thinking I would be fearful, uh, in a job like that because people are yelling at me, hanging up, take me through the evolution of Orlando and how you dealt with fear. And how that led to confidence in call centers.
ORLANDO HAMPTON 21:26
Yeah, this is a, this is a really interesting perspective on it because, uh, what Mark means is that right now, if you guys decide to curse at me and hang up, I’ll be just fine. Because working as a, as a call center agent, uh, can just expose you to all kinds of things that it’s like, uh, and so there is like a real fear, right, of what people will say. Uh, and you know what will happen? I think one of the things that’s interesting about this is that by going through the experience, uh, one thing you realize is that you’re still here, right? No matter how bad things have gone. So, you know, for all five of us, no matter all the challenges and all the things that we’ve gone through in life, uh, not one of them has killed us because we are all still here. Uh, and once you recognize that, that you can get to the other side, even in, uh, kind of the most calamitous situation, uh, it kind of gives you some stability. Uh, in terms of this is actually something I’m moving through. So, you like go through problems, uh, but the key word there is through, uh, which means that you’re passing through, uh, that you are going to see the other side of this. I, I actually think, and, and I think, you know, I think you made a great point, Kristin, around like the, the biological reaction, uh, to this stuff. I want to make a similar point to that, kind of adjacent to that. But I actually think that in leadership and certainly in corporations, and I spent a lot of times working in Corporate America, um, I actually think that there is a, um, we don’t, we don’t train people well. Uh, in terms of how to deal with, like, fear or courage. We talk about courage. We talk about having corporate courage, right? You should push back on leadership. You should, uh, you know, not be afraid to be counterintuitive. But the incentives aren’t always aligned for that. Uh you know, people who are pushing back or taking lots of risk, uh, put themselves at risk in the company. Um, where, you know, we’ve kind of trained an entire generation of leaders that you can just be a fast follower. You don’t have to do anything. Uh, you just wait till someone else does it and then you try to do it quickly. Uh, so like I’m in the enterprise software sales space. And when I talk to people, uh, the first question they always ask is, who else is doing it? Right? And, and if the answer to that is no one else is doing it, you know, they’re almost out immediately, right? So, so there’s this, there’s this kind of this, this built in process where we’ve, we’ve basically taught people to be like conservative and to kind of avoid, you know, these, you know, hard situations, but you really only push those down the line, uh, when you do that. So, I’m a big proponent of, Like transparency. So like Steve, in your case where, you know, you’re going through this with your team. The best thing to do is get the information out quickly. And yes, that’s going to be uncomfortable, but it allows people a moment to live in that uncomfortability and kind of work with you for solutions. I find that it’s always difficult when people Try to not put the negative messages out there. And then, so one side of the house realizes the house is on fire and the other side is like, oh, things are just fine. That never works.
STEVE FRENCH 24:44
It’s just foggy in here. Sure is warm.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 24:50
But Orlando, we don’t, we don’t just teach people that we reward them for being fast followers. I feel like we have absolutely had a race to the bottom in the law of averages. The risk taking is really for the big billionaires out there trying to go to space, not for the corporate folks, or even in academia. So, I think that’s an important point you brought up.
ORLANDO HAMPTON 25:11
I was actually going to ask that, a follow up on that. I mean, societally, do you think, that’s becoming more of the case that people are conservative and fear mongering and, and fear inducing than, you know, leading, taking action. I tend to think we are getting, we’re going in the wrong direction on that one personally. I don’t know if you guys feel the same way or not. I’ll be interested to get your perspective.
DR. JAMES BRYANT 25:37
Yeah, Steve, I don’t know if we’re going in the wrong direction. I think because of social media, because of access, we, we can identify how many more, how many things are going in that direction. Whereas in the past, there may not have been accurate ways for us to be able to identify that. Another point I wanted to kind of bring up or a thought is that is that, you know, fear in and of itself is our friend because it wants to keep you safe. So, fear is not the issue. It’s our response to fear becomes the issue. So, what’s driving you, what’s driving your decisions? Is it that, you know, are you fearful of something bad happening? What’s the driver and what’s going to be your response? So, focusing on our response to fear becomes the thing to do. So, are you going to just simply react, give in, or are you going to respond in a way that’s going to impact your situation?
STEVE FRENCH 26:31
Yeah. And, you know, it’s interesting just tying all those ideas together. One of the big things about, you know, we talked about the reptilian brain, Kristin, you brought that up brilliantly. This is unconscious for so many people, right? And it’s become now a conscious skill for me. It’s become a muscle for me where I recognize that I feel the uncomfortableness that it’s kind of like, oh yeah, okay, I’m here again. All right. I can figure this out. And then I kind of get industrious and I get curious, and I start to pull it apart and I start to fix it. It’s interesting. I’ll, I’ll tell you a quick story about how, you know, we talked a minute ago about how the people around us can help us or support us. And for a lot of people, this is still an unconscious response. So, um, I, uh, I had a big job. I was, uh, uh, CIO for an 800 million publicly traded company. Um, I was building my dream home. I was 32. Uh, we were moving into our dream home on December 15th. We had all of our family coming from across the country to celebrate Christmas with us. And on December 6th, uh, the company got split up and I was let go. So,
MARK WRIGHT 27:52
Let’s go to plan B.
STEVE FRENCH 27:53
I’ll fast forward for a little bit and then I’ll come back. So, I, uh, talked to my dad and he said, you’ve got to talk to your banker, and you’ve got to talk to your lawyer. And so, I called my banker, and I called my lawyer and I said, here’s what’s going on guys. Here’s my plan. And I said to the banker, I want you to back me to move into our dream home. We’ve been building it for seven months. You know, we want your support. Here’s our plan. You’ve been a great partner for us. And can you imagine a banker saying that now? I mean, so many bankers are just data entry clerks, right? But anyway, this woman went to bat for me, and she said, yup, we’re going to back you. And we moved into our home and that was great. So that was December 15th. December 12th, I went to the lighting showroom store to pick out the final couple of lighting and fixtures and that sort of thing. And one of my parents, best friends happened to be in the store. She came rushing across the store. Oh my God, Steve, I was just talking to your mom, and she told me everything that happened. Oh, are you going to be okay? And I just went. Uh yeah, I’m going to be okay. And here’s my plan. And so, I told her and she was like, oh, okay. And anyway, she went on and I did my thing, and I bought my lights and I went out and I sat down in the car and I kind of crossed my arms and went, wow, she was really upset. Should I be a little bit more upset than I am right now? But the whole point was I had taken all of these steps. I had taken all of these actions and I called, uh, one of my great advisors and mentors and he got me a new job. We opened a hospital in the UK, and I started two weeks later. So, it’s one of those things. It’s the action where the results are. It’s the action that gets you out of the discomfort into what’s next. So, you have to be very, very careful. If I hadn’t met that friend earlier on in that whole process, what would the, what would the story have looked like? And it may have been different because she might’ve, you know, you know, incited all of this, you know, triggered all that fear response and triggered that way. So you’ve got to be really careful about how and when you’re sharing this because some people just aren’t capable of doing it. And it was no conscious decision on her part. It was completely unconscious.
MARK WRIGHT 30:15
And Steve, had you not kept a clear mind, who knows where you would have ended up. I mean, I think that’s, that’s another lesson that I’m hearing from you is that clarity and staying calm and seeking counsel are probably the best things that you can do when you’re facing a really scary situation because the opposite is closing up, shutting down, isolating, getting up in your head and freaking out. And I know from personal experience in my life, you know, as a broadcaster, getting fired is something that happens on a regular, regular basis. And when it first happened, it was extremely, uh, scary. Uh, I had a two-year-old son. I didn’t know what am I going to do? I’ve got a mortgage. Um, and it all worked out. And what I learned from that is, is exactly what you said, Steve. The more that you can take a breath, step back, assess the situation and, and make those clear decisions.
STEVE FRENCH 31:07
But counsel, counsel is a really powerful word there. And it implies trusted advisor. It implies coach. It implies mentor. It implies support, which, uh, it depends on who you’re talking to, whether they’re capable of providing that or not.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 31:25
Yeah, I would add, and I’m hearing this from what James and Steve were saying, that courage becomes a skill of practice, much like any other muscle. It’s not something that’s going to be natural for all the reasons that we talked about. So having the repetition of opportunities to practice it up until we most need it, it’s like negotiation. My kids, um, always roll their eyes when they’re out with me. Cause I go up and I’m like, do y’all have any discounts today? Um, is there a coupon I don’t know about? And I’m like, um, and they’re just, but then they benefit because I love like the probabilities and most of the time and that goes into a different topic about asking when you ask you make room for other things on the menu, but it also comes back to this what she just said, and you said to Mark about counsel. When we’re afraid and fear takes over and keeps us quiet, when we allow there to be shame because of a change of circumstance or something that we put our ego to, when we internalize it, which again, a lot of us have been rewarded to do, as Orlando was saying, in different corporate situations, we do not benefit from borrowing other people’s belief and benefiting from their confidence in us and their courage and alternative things like Steve said with his father and other people. Sometimes we need to be recipients of courage before we have enough strength in our own.
DR. JAMES BRYANT 32:50
Two, well, it may be more than two, but here’s two things that I thought about. One is that isolation empowers fear. So, when you isolate, you give fear power. And when you are sharing, you disarm fear, but you have to share with the right people. Kind of what Kristin was talking about, people that you can borrow confidence from or borrow courage from. And so, it’s really important that you surround yourself with people that are going to be able to support and uphold you, people that you are moving in a similar direction, or they may be slightly ahead of where you want to go, but I think that’s important to be able to have that kind of environment where you can be supported and not pulled back.
MARK WRIGHT 33:38
Orlando.
ORLANDO HAMPTON 33:39
You know, this made me think, uh, particularly Steve, where you were talking about the council, uh, and you know, resources, and I was, I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately because I actually think one of the, um, I’m always looking at the pros and cons of, of various things. And so, I look at technology today and its ability to beam messages around the world quickly. And there are amazing benefits to that kind of thing. Just, uh, the speed at which we know information. Um, there’s some downsides. One at one of those is like bad news travels faster. So, we are all kind of experiencing bad news, uh, which seems like it’s worse than ever, but is it really worse than ever. But is it just the speed of it, you know, moving much faster, right? If, if something happened at, you know, a shopping center in Minneapolis today, the truth is 20 years ago, I would have just never heard of that. That would have never come across my radar, but now I would almost get immediate notification that something has happened. And so, there’s kind of a sense that things are worse. The thing I wanted to talk about though, is, is that you brought up the thing around counseling is it’s really important to figure out who to trust. Uh, if you’re going to go for some kind of counsel and so I wrote about this recently on LinkedIn, but it was, there’s, there’s really three categories, right? There’s care. Uh, so, you know, someone who actually cares for you, they want the best for you. Uh, familiarity, it helps if they know you well. And then credibility, they have some relevant experience, uh, in this space. And so, if you can get all three of those to overlap, right? So, like in a case where you call your father, that’s, that’s gold, right? It’s like, you know, I got someone who cares for me, they’re familiar with me and they have credibility in the space. Uh, I think oftentimes that today we sometimes fall for like one or two of the categories, right? Someone is, is credible, right? They’re a financial services expert. Uh, but they don’t actually know us. They don’t know our situation and we don’t know if they actually care for us, but these people will create a whole platform, right? I see people giving relationship advice and then when I look at them, they’re like sitting in their car, holding a phone to their face. And I’m wondering, why does this person qualify to give this his relationship advice? And so, it’s it’s interesting is like, you know, to to where, uh, where those intersections are, right? If I care for you and I’m familiar, I might be able to give you advice, but I also might be wrong because I don’t have any credibility in the space, right? If I’m credible and I care for you, uh, you know, it might not actually apply to you because I don’t actually know you. Uh, and if I’m familiar and it’s credible. That’s could all be true, but it might not even be trying to help you, right? Because I don’t actually care for you. So, I actually think, you know, it’s important to get that counsel, but that it, that kind of starts with learning who to trust, uh, to begin with. And, you know, just, I think of things technically, but that’s a, it’s a good way of thinking about who to trust and where they fit.
MARK WRIGHT 36:38
Orlando, that is brilliant. Um, those three things I was asking, uh, a mentor friend of mine yesterday, big life question. And when that trusted advisor tells you something and you’re kind of headed down the wrong path, it immediately leads to like a lightning bolt in your chest. And I’m like, oh yeah, oh yeah. And the power that that counsel has when it’s the right person is just undeniable and it’s gosh, man, you just shed so much light on why that’s so, so powerful and so valuable. Uh, Steve.
STEVE FRENCH 37:18
Yeah. And just to, uh, to pull on that thread for a minute there, Orlando, the credibility piece is something that I’ve been, I don’t know, it seems as though that’s been getting a bit of momentum lately and people are getting much more attuned to, um, when help is truly representative and experiential. And when it’s experiential and people are coming at it from a, I actually went through this as opposed to just recognizing a few of the prompts and, oh, I read that book and blah, blah, blah or there was a great blog post or whatever to have actually gone through it. That’s part of my criteria now for figuring out who I’m going to be talking to. Number one, there’s also a flip side to that because I am a trusted advisor. I am a coach for our clients, for our team, and I am much more discerning as to when I open my mouth these days, which is a really interesting shift. So that’s the second part of that, which is interesting. There’s a third part, which is interesting. You know, the rate of acceleration or rate of change with technology and AI and all these tools that are out there right now makes it so easy to create content that has no experience. There’s going to be a huge opportunity. Whoever can figure out what that filter is to, you know, take the 5,000 people in our LinkedIn feeds. And here are the 12 that are really going to make a difference for you based on where you are. Cause that’s the other big thing, experiential knowledge. It depends on where you are. Are you a, an $8 million company? Are you an $800 million company? It’s a different, um, discussion. It’s a different set of things that will get you a result. So anyway, I just, I thought that was a, an interesting knowledge. I mean, are you guys finding that too? Are you finding that you’re noticing that more and more these days?
ORLANDO HAMPTON 39:19
To Totally on this end. I mean, I, I find that like, you know, one of the things that’s happened is there’s been a shift, uh, and I actually from a technical standpoint. Sorry, guys, I spend all my day with software engineers and technologists. So, I become just dangerous enough, uh, to know a few things. But I find that, uh, like in the technology space, something simple as, uh, data storage is cheaper than ever today, right? So, you know, 20 years ago, if somebody said they were going to get something to store a terabyte of data, what they really meant was they were going to buy a supercomputer that they maybe had to keep in a like 18-wheeler outside their house. Today, you know, you get your, your mobile phone might have a terabyte of data, uh, you know, running from it, right? And so, because storage is so cheap, we’ve quickly moved from a society where search was a big thing, right? So, just, you know, over the last decade, that was a thing. You search for things, you look for a movie, you search for a movie, and now there are so many movies in the library that searching is actually pointless. So, it’s actually suggestion. It’s if it wasn’t for, you know, the devices suggesting here’s the thing you should read or here’s the movie you should watch. It would be impossible to just sit down and go through the catalog and figure out what to see. And so that has actually invaded like all pieces of our life. So, to your point, Steve is, you know, you go on LinkedIn today, you could search, you could search for the right messages. But there’s so many messages out there and the content, uh, you know, it’s kind of proliferated at such a speed where really we’re all depending on suggestion, right? And so those suggestions as to here’s what you should look at, um, that becomes a really big deal. And so even, even to like, you know, our topic around fear and courage, you know, you have to be very careful that, you know, you don’t fall into an echo chamber of fear, right? Is because it’s easy to find it. You can, you know, just see one story after another of people who have failed at things, and you can fall into that space very quickly. Uh, you know, on the flip side, you could fall into like people overcoming stuff all the time, but we all have to kind of find our way back to uh, this place where, you know, care, credibility, familiarity, and we hold people to those standards before we can actually go in and really take advice. Um, and I, I think, I think learning, you know, where to get your information, uh, is going to be critically important because to your point, you know, with like gender of AI and whatnot, there will be more information than ever. And unfortunately, a lot of it will be before a good quote is, uh, I saw this David Simon, uh, who was a writer for the wire, uh, said that the, the key to great writing is rewriting. Uh, and that’s probably still the case, uh, maybe even more so, uh, with the gender of AI and the stuff out there today. So, it’s not, you know, even humans on a first pass. It isn’t great. It’s the follow up passes. So, when I hear people saying, well, this AI writes just as well as a human, I’m like, yeah, read a human’s first pass. So, so, so any of it, but, but I do think, I, I think you’re right that there is, there’s just so much of that today. There’s so, there’s so much noise. You have to kind of figure out a way to parse through that noise. And to me, that starts with, you know, finding people that fit into these three categories.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 43:00
Orlando, I love your point about just the so much search. I, I’m of the generation where I had to fight with my brothers about who got to walk across the room and change the channel, right? Cause it was happy days and then you had to change it. Um, but it also goes back to, I’m going to see your quote with another one, because there’s so much, it just becomes this background fan in our brain. And I love the quote that says we are drowning in information and starving for wisdom. And I would take that a step further to say we’re also, um, hungry for people showing us what’s possible instead of what is protective. And that echo chamber that’s it’s brilliant. And I will also say another controversial statement just to put it out there. Um, courage is a privilege. Fear is universal, but courage and being able to speak up because we talked about repercussions and the rest of it. It’s, um, it may not either be an example or accessible for a lot of different elements. And I think that that’s something that holds people back, not because they don’t have the skill or the desire, but because of the environment.
MARK WRIGHT 44:05
Wow.
ORLANDO HAMPTON 44:07
Those are great. Those are awesome.
MARK WRIGHT 44:10
We should be recording this.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 44:13
Yes, but let’s rewrite it.
MARK WRIGHT 44:17
You know, when I think back over human history, and I think of the Rosa Parks’, and I think of Tiananmen Square, and I think of examples of extraordinary human courage. Um, I think, one of the side effects, one of the benefits of courage is when we are courageous, other people see it, and there’s a truth that permeates everyone around us at the time. And I know from my life, when I’m around leaders who have taken courageous positions, it, it inspires me to want to be better. Well, it inspires me to want to do the same and it’s, it’s not easy, but I, I really love your, your analogy, Kristin of, of courage as a muscle, because I mean, if you think about any endeavor we do, and I don’t want to cheapen the conversation. But I’m going to talk about golf right now. If you look at golf, the best golfers in the world can become victims of their own fear. And you see it every Sunday. These are the most skilled athletes on the planet at that game. And every once in a while, when the stakes are super high, they’ll hit a horrible shot, one that you and I could hit. And it just goes to show you that even at the highest level, fear can hijack the human brain. But what they do about that fear is they say, okay, that happened. What’s my next shot. What am I going to do next? So, I hope the golf analogy landed with you guys, because if it didn’t, we’ll have to cut it out.
DR. JAMES BRYANT 46:02
No, I think what landed is what do you do after you hit that bad shot? What do you do after you make that bad decision? What do you do after some kind of loss happens? What do you do? And you take the next shot and that is courage that is saying, but because what happens is that when you’ve made the bad shot, there is a tendency to start to think you’re going to beat yourself up. Every shot that I make is going to be bad. What I’m going, you know, like, what am I going to be doing? I’ve, so you, there’s a tendency to want to shut down. But as you said, Mark. What did you do? Step up. It’s time to take the next shot.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 46:40
When my son was 16, he spent a year at an elite golf Academy in Florida and it was during COVID and it was so he could be outside and they had all these simulators and this high tech and just coaches and they, they gave everybody a mental coach as part of it, which I wish we all had at the age of 16, just because of everything that we just said here. But one time I was just watching them as they were getting ready to put it into the system. They were just doing the simulator and his coach said to him, he was doing shot after shot because I was there as coach was there, it was being recorded. And so, he was having some lousy shots and his coach just said, good, celebrate getting the bat out. And it was such an interesting framing, especially in golf, but it of like, and Orlando said it earlier, that was our first draft. Like great! Celebrate getting that done because now you can get closer to the better shot. So, it’s a nice tie in both with golf, but also a reminder that we’re supposed to be shitty at first.
ORLANDO HAMPTON 47:34
You know, I love that, Steve. I, you’ve, uh, my mind has gone back a few times to, I think one of the thing, I just want to point this out. One is I think vulnerability can be a superpower. Uh, and I think your willingness to be vulnerable around this situation, uh, just speaks volumes that people see it and they want to, they want to be a part of that. They, they want to be a part of the solution. Um, when, if you think about, to me, when I draw the difference between confidence, uh, and courage. Confidence tends to be when you have a plan, you believe in it, you know, it’s going to work. So, you’re confident. Even if other people don’t believe in it, you have this confidence because maybe you have some data, some experience that would suggest that this is the right way to go. Where courage comes into it is, we actually don’t always know whether or not these plans will work, right? It’s not, it’s not really that binary decision where it’s like this is either successful or not successful. It’s kind of like we think this might work. I’m going to have the courage to carry it forward, even though I haven’t hit the, you know, line of demarcation for confidence yet that I know this is going to happen, right? So, there is kind of a distinction there. The last thing I would say, too, is is I actually find for myself, it’s so important to do postmortem and figure out like what actually happened. And the reason why I say this is we can sometimes use the, the result, the outcome. And we will use that to inform. You know, our opinion on the quality of our strategy, and that’s not always correct. Your strategy very well could have been correct, but the outcome could have just been unfortunate. Could have been some series of things, a black swan event of some kind. And so, what you don’t want to do is like overcorrect. And start saying, okay, we need to do things completely different around here because you know, our outcome didn’t work in this particular case. So I just be careful to pull back, uh, and make sure that you’re not like abandoning good strategies, good approaches, because you didn’t get the outcome you wanted. Um, that’s, I always have to think about that when you’re in the, in the midst of a chaotic situation.
MARK WRIGHT 49:45
Wow. So, Orlando having that level head as you navigate the fearful event, but then also in the postmortem, really having a level head about what the true causes of the outcome were.
ORLANDO HAMPTON 49:57
Yes. And, and it’s the postmortem for me, It’s not about blame assignment. I think a lot of times we do that. This went wrong. Who did it? Whose ideal is this? Who, who sent us in this direction? I actually find that, uh, you know, you’re better off spending time fixing, uh, things than trying to identify. Who was the person that broke them? Um, because that, that, that race for trying to figure out who’s responsible, that kind of puts people into defensive modes. People start then, you know, arguing about their positions that they held previously, and you never get around to actually fixing it. So, you know, when, when I hear something is broken, my, my reaction is not like who broke it. It’s, you know, how can we fix it? And what do we have to do to make sure that we can’t break it in the future? Uh, as opposed to like, you know, pinpointing like who was responsible because I see that all the time, right? Someone broke it, but don’t worry. We fired them. Well, great. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s still broken. What are we going to get around to fixing it? So,
MARK WRIGHT 51:06
Orlando, in our podcast episode with you, one of the things that you said that really struck me was in Corporate America today, fear often will take many proposals and put them in somebody’s desk drawer, never to see the light of day again, because that manager is fearful that if they implement that idea, that someone had and it doesn’t work, it’s on them. So, I’d love to ask the group, that’s a common occurrence. You know, you’re a gatekeeper as a manager. Do we do this initiative? Do we take on this client? Do we, do we go down this path? How, how do we evaluate that? How do we best prepare for those episodes so that the best ideas do come to light and that we’re not driven by the fear of failure. Kristin?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 51:49
Yeah, I worked at, um, several public companies and one of them, um, was, own trip advisor when we were talking about reviews and our kind of dependence on other people’s opinions. One of the things I loved about Steve Koffer who was the founder and CEO of that he always talked about fail forward. Please fail. Fail forward. Back, back to like what Orlando was saying, but tip it forward. Bring, break it, but then bring it forward. Because when you fire that person, you just wasted all that training on them. That’s like the classic thing. But one of the things I, he gave an example of back in early website development, instead of going out and doing extensive research on, do people want a beach vacation, a golf vacation, a family vacation, and then putting it up there and waiting to see. He and his team would put up those same links, beach, golf family, but they were broken links. And so, then when people would click on it, they would get the 404 error. And they would just assume as we all do, oh, there’s something glitchy with my computer. But at the end of the day, Steve said, we now had metrics of who clicked on which broken link. You could have broken links for one day, or you could do research for four months. And then the next day, oh, okay. It’s all beach vacations right now. That’s what we’re going to sell. And we do everything backwards, and I say this as an inflated consultant that you can now hire, but we’ll trust outside opinions more than we do it with the inside, or we want to, um, research is a form of procrastination and that gets in the way of innovation. And so, there’s something about speed, speed wins and failure wins because we got the bad out. Okay, nobody wants golf vacations right now, except for Mark, apparently. But it’s that element of like, can we use the data we have and make the decisions in the day that we have, instead of trying to predict everything. So, if we normalize failure, we actually get better faster.
MARK WRIGHT 53:43
So, Orlando, I, I should ask you, I mean, at Afiniti, how do you, how do you embrace those ideas in a way and get your, your managers to get into the mindset of, of taking a risk is okay?
ORLANDO HAMPTON 53:55
Yeah, this is, it’s, it’s so important. I mean, failure, failure can be your friend. Honestly, you, you need to be at an organization. Uh, if you don’t have ideas that aren’t failing. Uh, what that really means is that your, your selection process for picking ideas is obviously too conservative because you’ve managed to only pick ideas that are guaranteed to win. Uh, that might sound great, but what that means is that you’re leaving lots of great ideas on the table that might have won. Uh, they just weren’t guaranteed to get there. So, one, one of the ways I like to attack this is that, you know, one of our big challenges in corporate hierarchy is that corporate hierarchy is generally on a ladder. So, you report to one person and then that person reports to one person. Uh, and what that means is that if you can’t get your idea past your boss, then the idea is dead on arrival because there is no one else to actually go to. And in fact, if you were to take that idea to one of your boss’s peers, or worse yet, your boss’s boss, that would be like wildly pushed back in the organization as like inappropriate behavior, uh, and the way that you’re moving the organization. So, one of the things we’ve done at Afiniti is we effectively eliminated that, uh, as a hierarchical pursuit. So, if, you know, someone who works for me has an idea, and I don’t particularly like that idea. It doesn’t die there. They still have the ability to take it to my peers, right? We still have the ability. We may even bring it up, you know, in a meeting with the superiors. Uh, and I don’t, I don’t couch that idea is like, I don’t agree with this idea, but please listen to Nathan. Instead, instead we present it, uh, as like one of our ideas. These are things that are there. And you know, I have to have a willingness as a leader to be able to accept, hey, even if I think an idea is not great, but other people are moving in that direction, I got to quickly get on board and try to figure out, okay, well, how do we make the most of this particular situation? But it’s, it’s basically allowing, uh, making sure that you yourself, uh, are not somebody who is just there to, you know, stop progress because you personally don’t agree with a particular idea, or you don’t agree with a specific project. So that’s, that’s one of the things, uh, in terms of a management structure, uh, that we try to put in place.
MARK WRIGHT 56:20
So, as we wrap up our conversation, this has been so rich, you guys, I’d love to just go around the circle and just ask for a little bit of inspiration. We’ll end with Steve, but, uh, Kristin, what’s some inspiration in terms of leaning into courage? Using it as a muscle. I loved what you said, but just, uh, pump us up as we, as we exit.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 56:38
Oh, okay. Just, just quickly pump you up. Yeah. Well, I’ll come back with a quote as I am want to do. And as Orlando and I were doing, but one of my favorite ones it’s really been pervasive for me is leap and a net will appear. So, the, there’s a fine line between faith and fear, but, um, it, you’re never going to see the fruits until you actually leap and having that. What, because it’s not about that. The circumstances are all going to work out. Mark, you said something earlier about what if I make the wrong decision? The root of it is there’s only one decision and it’s the one that you make. There aren’t multiple fictitious doors that you didn’t go through, and you have to trust that you will be able to pivot and make new decisions based on what happens. So, leap.
MARK WRIGHT 57:20
I love it. James.
DR. JAMES BRYANT 57:22
I think it’s difficult to have courage if you’re not aware of danger. Not that danger is a bad thing, but it is real, and it is there. And that’s the thing you’re having courage for that, that, the negative thing that could happen. Um, and being aware of that danger and saying, okay, this danger, it exists. It’s here. Fear, I’m aware of you, but now I’m going to make this decision to move forward. To me, that’s courage.
MARK WRIGHT 57:53
Awesome. Orlando.
ORLANDO HAMPTON 57:55
Uh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna come up with a quote from one of my favorite people, uh, Kelly Whiteside, who is, uh, one of the, uh, people who run HR within Afinit, and she says, uh, that when God closes one door, uh, he opens a window but this hallway sucks. And it’s that middle ground. Uh, that that’s the space that we have to remember, right? We, we remember the door closing. We remember the window opening, but there’s a middle, there’s a space there where, uh, we’re unsure. We don’t know where it’s gone. That’s the space we have to get comfortable. Uh, and when you’re in that space, you can just got to know I’m in the hallway at this moment, not going to stay here, right? I’m going to eventually get out to one of these doors, get out a window, but I have to operate and live in this space. Uh, and, uh, so I’ll leave with that. See, Kelly is, uh, I don’t know if anybody’s ever quoted the famous Kelly Whiteside, she’s going to be happy when she hears this.
MARK WRIGHT 58:57
You tell Kelly, can you tell Kelly it? I, I love, love, love that. Because getting to the window sometimes really sucks. And getting out of the window you might, you know, skin your shins. Steve, really grateful that you brought this to the table. This is such a great topic and I appreciate your honesty and your vulnerability. Um, why don’t you wrap this up?
STEVE FRENCH 59:21
I think, um, the other big thing that I’ve recognized as part of this is just how we need to be kind. We need to be kind to ourselves. We need to be kind to each other. You know, Shannon and Julia Waller have been on the podcast. Uh, Shannon and Julia’s mom has a great phrase, don’t should on me. So, uh, we also need to be very kind. So those people who. We asked to be our trusted advisor and they’re not capable of it. You know, they’re just doing their best and it doesn’t mean that we have to, you know, we don’t have to necessarily like everything that we hear back. We don’t have to take action on everything that we hear back. Just be kind to them and be grateful with what happened and most importantly, be kind with ourselves. Because when we’re going through stuff like that, it’s all too often. Uh, you can get into the, into the clench of it. And I find nothing ever good happens from that place. So, if you close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, give yourself some space to, uh, to breathe, uh, the right answer is there. You just have to have, have to have the patience to find it.
MARK WRIGHT 01:00:40
So, Rob Dube, who is Gino Wickman’s partner, business partner, they have a new book coming out called “Shine” and Rob’s coming up on, on the podcast. And one of the things I love about the book shine is that they throw it out, that every decision comes from either love or fear. And when we think about those decisions that we make on a daily basis, whether it’s at home or at work, there really is no middle ground. It’s either a decision or an action that’s based in love and a good intent or in fear and, and, uh, maybe a, not so pure intent and uh, I’m inspired to do that on a daily basis. I really appreciate this group. There is so much combined wisdom and I learned so much today from all of you. Orlando Hampton, Steve French, James Bryant, and Kristin Graham. I always appreciate our time together and thanks for joining us for another edition of Contributors Corner, and I hope to see all of you very soon. I’m Mark Wright. Thanks for listening to BEATS WORKING part the WORKP2P family. New episodes drop every Monday. And if you’ve enjoyed the conversation, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Special thanks to show producer and web editor Tamar Medford. In the coming weeks, you’ll hear from our Contributors Corner and Sidekick Sessions. Join us next week for another episode of BEATS WORKING, where we are winning the game of work.