Episode 414: Results Resourcing with Elizabeth Eiss

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Elizabeth Ice. She's the founder and CEO of Results Resourcing, an innovative online talent curation— that important, that word is very important— online talent curation platform and service that Elizabeth designed and co-developed. And she pioneered a human-led, AI-enabled system that simplifies the process of engaging on-demand Virtual Talent. Now, if you've never had someone who's a remote or a virtual assistant or a freelancer in your business, I didn't either until about 6 years ago. But we dive into some of the mental makeup and the different things that someone could actually do on your team that maybe you've never considered freelance, fractional, remote work, I think this episode becomes a real masterclass for you. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Elizabeth Ice. Elizabeth, welcome to the Above the Business podcast.

Thank you so much, Bradley. Glad to be here.

Great to have you. We love to start with background and origin stories. So once you take people back and bring us to present day about how you got to where you are today.

All right. Well, um, like many, I started in corporate America. And had a long, rewarding and successful career there. But 24 years ago, I up and joined my first startup. So completely changed track and really had no— just got a really interesting opportunity to join a startup. And, you know, many didn't— don't succeed. That one did not, but it was way ahead of its time. And that launched me into this arena of really entrepreneurship and, and frankly, the notion of how do you access expertise in the cloud. And, you know, that was really what that first startup was all about that didn't succeed. But what, what you see today through podcasting or whatever it is, is the ways to find expertise are so, so numerous. I happen to have focused on freelancers. Mm-hmm. And how small businesses, solopreneurs can scale their businesses by hiring really talented people that are remote. And 24 years ago, the notion of the gig economy, freelancers, remote were very foreign concepts, especially to small businesses. Bigger businesses had been adopting that for a long while. But to make a long story short, I ended up hiring a lot of freelancers myself and finding that for a small business that doesn't have my big business operations background, found it difficult to find talent. I found it easy and found great talent. So I ended up building a company called Results Resourcing because we resource results. And we're kind of a combination, a hybrid staffing company and talent platform. And we, we are exclusively focused on solopreneurs and small employers to help them hire high-quality freelancers so they can outsource in particular their backroom. And they can focus on really what drives value for their firms. So that's kind of soup to nuts where I ended up, you know, from big corporate America to, you know, my own startup and technology platform and, and really helping other businesses hire great freelancers like your EA who helps you do more.

Yeah. You know, um, how do you first— we, we'll get into, you know, some of the people that you work with and businesses and the benefit of that, etc., because I, I certainly have had my own journey, as a matter of fact, uh, with both remote fractional freelancers. And it's really come mostly in the last 6 years, really. Um, before that I didn't. But before we get into any of those type of things, I have a question. Uh, when you look back and that business was before its time and you see now where it is, what are some of the lessons that you maybe have in that experience? With someone who has an idea. Probably our listening audience wasn't— wouldn't be in the emerging technology space. That's not typically the things that we, we talk about. We really talk about much more around small businesses. But what is your thoughts in the lessons you learned in that experience about having a business that you can now look at and go, oh my gosh, that's exactly— we, we were right there. But we're on the bleeding edge. We're actually too soon. What about for somebody to listen to this that maybe has an idea that's just not there yet, but down the road it could be? What are your thoughts on that?

That's a great question. No one's ever really asked me that. Um, well, I would say that, um, more power to you if you have an idea that's ahead of its time, honestly, because it's very rewarding. It's exciting. And it's, it really, it's fun to think about what can be and think about how to make something happen. But at the same time, being a market maker, I think the phrase is, is really, really hard. And that first startup, um, I joined wasn't a particularly well-structured startup. Otherwise, I probably never would have joined it because they paid me a lot of money to join it, you know, really to help them run the business from an operating standpoint. But, um, it was a really big business, big funding, all that kind of stuff. And it was focused on enterprise clients. So it's not the target market for this podcast. But I think that, you know, it's, it's hard to generate interest in being a startup doing something brand new in the enterprise space. I think for people that are downmarket, I think it can be a really interesting idea because, you know, as they say, it's easier to turn, you know, a little Coast Guard ship than it is a battleship. And, you know, so you can have some great ideas and test them out on a much smaller scale. And find what works. And because eventually, I mean, I did follow a path that started with Expertise Location, which was that huge startup. And I've been doing Expertise Location the rest of my— since then. Yeah. And so I think, I think that it's just recognizing that it's a much bigger job than you think. It's not— it's what's obvious to you is not obvious to others. And you've gotta, you've gotta be able to lay that foundation, explain why it's a good idea, but then it's still difficult to get the uptake. And I have to thank things like COVID and other things like that that helped people, small businesses, the people I chose to help, to think virtually because they didn't want to before. Yeah. So there's, there's things you control, things you can't control, and that all factors into just how dedicated you are to that new idea.

You know, I guess that's also why we seem to Regardless of what you— like, I'm just not big into politics at all, but regardless of what you think about certain people's politics, but like an Elon Musk and a Steve Jobs, what they were able to do with some of those emerging brand new ideas. I mean, electric cars, and I know that there were maybe other manufacturers out there, but let's be real, like, he really brought Tesla and electric vehicles really to the mainstream, and everybody's kind of followed suit. And then the iPhone with Steve Jobs, etc. I guess to your point, it's why we hold people like that in, I don't know, of high regard, but it's like, wow, that was a big deal to get such a groundbreaking technology off the ground. And, and they had a lot of financial backing to do that, you know. I mean, um, and, and, you know, a lot of perseverance through some, through some trials, um, you know, for sure. I mean, even I don't know if you read, uh, Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, but, uh, that book and his story of Nike is, is, is an incredible story around just perseverance and trying to bring new, something brand new to the marketplace, so to speak, you know. So I think, uh, you're, you're right, it is very, very difficult for sure.

But, you know, all those people that you mentioned just had unrelenting belief Yeah. In what they wanted to bring to market. And that's essential whether, whether you have money or not. But, you know, obviously the money helps.

No, you're right. They had unrelenting belief, even to the point that when bankruptcy should have been what the business should have done, they were like, no, I'm not going to until it literally is an absolute no. But you're so right that they had, they had self-belief in themselves and in the idea. Yeah, you're so, you're so right about that. Good point. Okay, so I don't know. Well, I'll tell you, I'll take you back actually, since you mentioned you interacted, uh, with, with my EA Courtney, who's been with me for a long time. Uh, I go back to my very first EA. I don't know if I've— I think I have told the story on the podcast before. My first EA was in 2016, full-time. Did not need a full-time EA at all. And so, not even close, okay? She didn't— I didn't know what she was gonna do.

I just—

none of that stuff. And so I overpaid, not her, but for what I needed, okay? And so I say that from a place of pain of, oh my gosh, I never even was crossing my mind to have fractional, let alone fractional remote people as part of my team. Now I've actually built two companies off the back of fractional remote people. So it's amazing the arc in really a short period of time that really started maybe 2018. So 6 years.

Yeah.

To kind of have that shift in myself. So I'm, and I'm saying that just not because you're on here, but that's honest, honest to goodness truth.

You're not alone.

So with that, what have you noticed with the people that you work with who are similar to me thinking, I'm not hiring somebody at 10 hours a week. Are you kidding me? Or 20 hours a week or whatever that may, may be. Can you talk about this idea and the shift that's happening with business owners?

Sure. Well, I think, I think what you just identified is fairly typical. I mean, especially again for solopreneurs and small employers. They're used to doing everything themselves and they grew up in an environment where they would hire somebody full-time because that was the only option. Hire somebody local that would be in the office with them, didn't really have process written down, didn't necessarily have a lot of technology tools. And, you know, so just, it was, it was really a kind of a DIY operation. And I think a lot of people resisted hiring somebody because they didn't want to be an employer, but that was kind of the only option. And so that forced people more and more into the DIY mode. And as technology evolved, there were there were more things people could do DIY. And so where, what I think is so brilliant about today's environment is that through virtual work and technology, people, people can work virtually and fractionally and businesses can benefit from that because the level of skill that you can get, depth, breadth, and scalability, flexibility is astounding. With freelance talent and more and more. I mean, in the early days of the business, when I would talk about freelancers, people would say, oh, that's somebody that's in between jobs. And it's not today. These are professionals that they're, whether they're a graphic designer or an executive assistant or whatever it is, they're professional at that job. That's what they wanna do. They're not looking to be hired to have a boss. They, they wanna run a business, which is very entrepreneurial. So they bring, they bring a different attitude towards delivery. Value delivery too, to the table. But I, I think that at the end of the day, the people that leverage this new capacity are the ones that really understand the value of time.

Yeah.

Because if you understand the value of your time, you're not going to be tempted to do things yourself that you can because there's technology, but should you when someone else can do it for you and probably do it better. Because they understand whether it's QuickBooks or, you know, Canva or whatever the tool is, you know, I think you can really get amazing talent. You know, pretty much anywhere in the world. I happen to focus on US and Canada. Most of the people come to us for freelancers that understand the culture here and understand how to do business in the United States or Canada. There are super smart people that speak and write English super well all over the world. But they lack that, the value of having, knowing the environment here and really how to operate in it.

Okay, we're gonna play a game. All right, I've never done this on the podcast, but I, I think it will— we'll see how it, how it turns out. Okay. All right, I try, I try ideas on the podcast with different things. Okay, so here's what I'm gonna do. I have already expressed like the use of freelancers in my own business. I mean, we have a couple, Ali on our team that's going to listen to this, and his entire team that edit our episode. They've been— or edit our podcast. They're amazing. And yeah, uh, I don't even know if we've ever actually jumped on a Zoom call ever with them in 4 and a half years, and they're incredible. And I love you, Ali and Effie, and the, and the team over there. So they're an example. So here's the game we're going to play. I'm going to play devil's advocate, okay?

Sure.

So I'm gonna come back— my, my personality is not to be argumentative, so we're gonna— this is going to be playful nature. Okay, so I'm going to ask some questions and say, yeah, but Elizabeth, what about X? Okay, does that sound good? Are you up for this?

I am.

Yeah, but Elizabeth, I hear that, but here's the deal. They're not going to be committed to my business. They're just going to do shoddy half-butt work because, see, they're not on my team full-time.

Not true. It all depends on who you choose. You know, if you choose, you know, It's like anything. If you, if you choose poorly, you could get, you could definitely get that result. But if you choose correctly, and that's actually part of what we do, we curate freelance talent to make sure we do the vetting and the testing and making sure that somebody is going to deliver the skills that they say they can deliver. So, you know, it's really a matter of who you pick and whether they, whether you bought into their marketing. And I think that's actually part of the problem with platforms. Well, there's two sources, platforms, and then your friendly neighbor that's trying to do you a favor. They don't really understand your business. And so if you type in some keywords for whatever you need into a platform, you're talking to technology and it's just gonna respond to the words you type in. And you could see 1,000 results, profiles, and you gotta go through all those profiles to figure out which one is the— which ones are the good ones? Because they're not all good, or they're not all equally good, depending on what really need— what the need is. And it also depends on how well you define your needs, because I find that's a big problem too. People don't really understand what it takes, the skills, the skills themselves and the skill level that's required to get you to wherever you want. So I think it's really, it's a mixture of all those things. That really drive results. But if you hire a business owner, they're going to be committed to you not to punch a clock but to deliver results, because that's really— you're a client to them, and it's a different mentality.

All right, we'll do another one. Yeah, but I'm used to working with people in person, local, because I need them to see me and I want to sit down with them and I want to talk to them, and I need them to get to kind of know know my business really in and out. So, you know, dealing with somebody that is not with me present, that's maybe kind of outside of the US or even outside of kind of my geographic area, that kind of makes me a little uncomfortable.

I get that, you know, but at the same time, do you have a lawyer? Do you have a CPA? Are they sitting next to you every day of the week? Do they know your business? I mean, I think there are some people that we outsource all the time. We don't even think twice about that. And if you have tools like Zoom, I'm looking at you today and I looking at your cool backdrop in your office. We could easily be sharing documents and things like that. There's lots of ways to work together today. And I think that whether we like it or not, and I think COVID, um, the period where COVID prevailed, it forced a lot of people into virtual work. And the ones that adapted, because I think adaptability, whether you're talking about remote work or something else, are the ones that survive. Because at the end of the day, the world's going to impose things on you. And really running a local-based business beyond a certain scale just probably isn't viable anymore. Plus being remote opens up new markets to you that, you know, talent-wise as well as potential customers. And that's, that's an expansive idea for a business.

Our, we have a designer on our team. She's a freelancer. She's a freelancer. She was a referral, um, referral actually from, uh, one of my coaches. And I really honestly think about her as part of our team, uh, at this point. She's done so many things. She's incredible at the work that she does. Um, we just had her work on an asset, uh, submitted to her. Um, it was a sentiment or a Google Doc. She already has all of our brand identity and she sent something back that I was like, wow, that is so much better than I ever thought that that actually could be. And I'll give her feedback and she, she doesn't take offense to my feedback. I'll say like, I don't like this. I don't like this. She wants that. It's great. I say that to say. Again, 5, 6 years ago, Bradley just never would have seen, been able to. And she, we, we communicate over Slack. Um, she's in Slovenia. She's been on a Zoom call with me one time. Uh, so I say all that to say, obviously we've, I've been able to kind of use some tools, Slack, Loom, to, you know, learn how to work asynchronously. And so there's, this is a two-part question. Okay. One is somebody listening to this may not be at that point with, they don't know how to work even asynchronously with a freelancer, number one. And then number two, admittedly, Petra was a referral from somebody in my, in my market. There's a needle in the haystack. I don't know who's good. And so I see this, so whenever I go on a platform, I'm reading some reviews. I think it's gonna work. I don't really know. So it's kind of like one of these things. Can you just kind of address maybe both of those elements, uh, both of those questions, maybe some thoughts that people would have around, and then we'll, after that, we'll move into actually some of the things that you typically help people to be able to find in the work that you help to curate for small business owners. Businesses and even some solopreneurs out there. But what, what are your first thoughts on, on those two questions?

Well, I'll answer the second one first. And, and I, you used the word, it's curation and recruiting. I mean, I, I think of the world in terms of non-core, non-core and core work. Core work is work that your client will pay you for that generates revenue, generates value. Anything that doesn't do that, isn't the best use of your time. That's non-core work. Depending on the kind of business it is, it— social media might be a core business to a, a digital marketing agency, but it's non-core to a coach, for example. So it's deciding, you know, what, what work is core and what, what is not core. But at the end of the day, hiring people is non-core to most businesses, whether it's freelancers or full-time employees. And at the end of the day, investing in someone that will help you curate talent to take that work off your plate goes a long way to having someone else do all that work. And they're more expert at it. They have more access to talent. And so the talent pool to choose from is better. There's just one thing after another that— get help in doing something. Because even if I go to one of the platforms and put a keyword in, someone as expert as I am in curating talent is gonna see the same 5,000 profiles that show up. You gotta go through them all. And unfortunately, most of the platforms that the main filters are geography or price, and those aren't necessarily the best filters for picking the best talent. Sure. So I think, you know, finding people to, to help you zero in on your needs so they're really clear and then helping you find the, the right freelancers. Make sure you're gonna, it's gonna ensure you have a much higher potential success rate.

Yeah.

That leads me to the second part of the question and, and people using virtual assistants, whether it's tools or not. One of the great things about superb executive and virtual assistants is they're skilled at a lot of administrative and operational things, and they can help the client figure out how to use them. Get organized, set up a schedule. What are the top priorities? How do you wanna work through that? Maybe even make suggestions about setting up a Slack channel or texting or whatever's easiest for the client. The freelancers are really good at helping the client utilize them. And so I think that, I mean, yes, it takes a leap of faith, you know, that, that first you get matched with somebody that you, you like and can trust. And you're willing to take that leap of faith, um, to have somebody help you learn how to outsource so you can do more of what matters because you're spending less time on the stuff that is the backroom of your business.

Yeah, it makes sense. So what is it— what is the actual experience like? I mean, tell me, walk me through maybe the typical things that people come to you with, the typical placements, the typical work that is, is being— you've obviously mentioned that a couple times already, but what does that typically work look like? What's the typical experience like whenever they reach out to you? How long does it take? I mean, what's the actual fulfillment and delivery look like practically?

Okay. Well, people come to us for all kinds of things. And I would say that the wish list is quite narrow when people come to us. They think about the things like managing their calendar or their email's out of control You know, or they haven't, their invoicing isn't up to date. If they have a CRM, they're not really utilizing it other than it's kind of a big spreadsheet. Those are the kind of things that come to first. And I think so people come just looking for that immediate organizational hit, you know, and, and help there. And then over time, um, and I'll speak more about our, what we call our on-demand jobs. They, their understanding of what's possible expands. And so I do a fair amount of public speaking on this, and I always talk about virtual assistants as a professional service. It's, it's not, it's not a task or something like that. It's somebody that's really skilled at providing back office support services. And at the lower end of the spectrum are the tasks, which is, you know, loading a database or whatever it might be. And increasingly, frankly, that stuff's being taken over by AI. So it's, it's offshored because it's inexpensive, but increasingly AI is taking over that work and people are defaulting to that. At the other end of the spectrum, which is more and more what people come to us for, is outcomes-based work, critical thinkers, creative thinkers. I mean, obviously, like your graphic designer who's taking your Google Doc and making something creative that fulfills your expectations in another format. And that's problem solving. And those are the kinds of higher-end roles. So we offer a range of things from basic virtual assistants, which can combine— comprise a laundry list of, you know, general administrative and operational support, you know, to project managers, to online seller support. If you want— somebody wants to set up a an Amazon shop, that's a highly technical endeavor and product positioning, you know, setting up this, the system, it's really the, the range is so broad. So what our experience starts with what we're doing today, a conversation. We actually have a human being, whether it's me or another teammate, and we actually talk to the business owner because I find that most of the time solopreneurs and small employers aren't very clear. They know what they need, but they don't know how to define it. So we, we start with a conversation, then we define it for them. And, and we basically did, did we get this right? So it's a, it's a confirmation process. And then we basically match them with not an individual freelancer, but a freelance team that has individuals that can be responsible for different roles. But the beauty of the freelance teams are skill breadth. Depth and scalability because a team is run by one person that has, owns a virtual assistance agency basically. And the bookkeeper is not the graphic designer. It's a completely different skillset, but that business owner might be a, might need a little bit of bookkeeping. They might need a little bit of graphic design. They might need a little email support. They might need a little bit of a lot of things and that team can consistently produce that work on an on-demand basis, you know, based on the hours that are needed on any given week. But you still have the oversight of that business owner, man, managing the whole client relationship. So we basically start with this one-on-one conversation that between technology that we use to make the matches, we don't ask the clients to use it. So no one, no one browses anything on our platform. We use it to deliver our services. We make a match to the team that we think is the best fit for the client and make that introduction. And then if, if it's a go, then we have them up and running in 24 to 48 hours.

Is it typically, is it like, what are the average engagements? And I'm asking that both from the length as well as the scope. And here's what I mean. Is it, do you see it typically 10 hours a week and ends up being ongoing? Is it 20 hours a week ongoing? Or do you typically see, uh, some where it's more of a project-based, um, where, hey, we've got a big project that we're kind of wanting to kind of build out, we need some, we need some folks in different areas, we need a funnel builder, we need a graphic design, we need to pull somebody in, but kind of once that gets stood up our team can run with it. So it ends up being more of a project-based scenario. What's the typical, uh, working relationship like?

Well, my initial reaction is all of the above, but I would say that the majority of, um, engagements are ongoing, uh, where the, the business owner is supported by a team that gets to know them and can dynamically respond to needs as they evolve. Typically, we have no minimums, you know, in terms of requirements. Many virtual assistant services do, do that, requiring a package of X hours or whatever. We don't do that. We basically charge a 1-hour job deposit that gets applied to the first invoice. Because what I've really found is that if the client and the agency get off on the right foot and they trust each other, work grows. So many times it will start at 2, 3 hours a week. And then within a couple of weeks, it's 5 to 8 hours a week and it grows from there. And there's some responsibilities that get outsourced on a quote unquote permanent basis to that freelancer. And then there's sometimes things, there's projects within that scope of work that get done and then they, they end and then it might get handed off. And I, one of the things that comes to mind that's most like that would be CRMs. So the, the high quality VAs are extremely technical and to the point where they can really recommend, you know, to a solopreneur, if they, who doesn't have a CRM that, you know, these are your choices and I recommend this one or this one or this one, depending on what they wanna do with it. But many small businesses, they will have a CRM, but it's set up to the bare minimum. And they are using it like a spreadsheet. And so, you know, the VAs will often, you know, help them optimize those systems, you know, set up templates, set up newsletters, set up email workflows, whatever it is. That would be an example of a project within the scope of ongoing work. That that work gets done and then either the VA continues that work or maybe they hand it off, the business hands it off to the sales team, for example. But you still have that continuity of the the VA or EA that can keep it up and running.

Hmm.

Yeah. Same with websites. Same kind of thing.

Makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah. I think for people listening, um, depending on where you are in the journey, but especially if you're under a million in revenue in that space for me, and I'm sure you work with people at different spots, but you know, it really does. You know, you listen to someone like, um, you know, I love his content, but Alex Hormozi, and he talks about, uh, you know, the quality of people that you bring on board. And then immediately your mind goes to, yeah, I can't afford— I can't afford somebody that's paid $250,000 a year. Like, I just can't, you know. Good for you, you're doing $100 million. Of course you can bring that person on, you know. And so I think we get into like, well, you know, what am I going to do? And so how do I actually begin to find and I just, um, again, I think technology has improved that. Certainly COVID accelerated it with more, um, acceptability with Zoom, right, as an example, for sure. Um, and, and I think that there are really some incredibly talented people that you can tap into, um, that is really affordable as opposed to trying to do the work yourself. And to your point, I think that allows you to focus much more on the what we call RPA, or revenue-producing activity time. And that looks a little different for each person.

Yeah.

You know, um, I think my— as to use the example from Petra earlier, it was RPA time for me to even come up with the idea that made it to a Google Doc. I mean, that all came out of my head, um, that ultimately is going to be an asset. We'll share it with our podcast guests at some point, our podcast, uh, listeners at some point. But, you know, All of that, sure, was that, but the designing of it and like, no way. Like, I mean, there's no point me spending time on Canva. Uh, no, I'm not going to do that. It's not a good use of my time at all. And not only that, even if I did, even if I did, it wouldn't be a tenth of, of, of the quality that somebody who spent their entire life doing it. I'd rather buy back my time and use somebody like that or work with someone that, like you guys, that can actually help me to curate that experience so I can just tap into that talent that you guys have. So I think it's great.

It kind of goes back to the value of time. We have this— in fact, I created a tool that we call the Value of Time Calculator, and it's because people were having a hard time understanding how they could afford a virtual assistant. Or any kind of outsourced freelancer. And it really starts with what's an hour of your time worth? And no one ever says $10. I mean, the average is I think $170, $175. And then we ask them, and how many hours a week do you work? They put something in. And what percentage do you spend of your time on revenue generating work? Simple questions. It makes a calculation and it tells you how much your investing in your business by spending your time on revenue-generating work. And then it just asks you a series of questions. Well, how many hours are you in doing customer service work? Writing blogs, social media, bookkeeping. I mean, it's a host of things like that. And then we just ask how many hours roughly that they spend. It does another calculation and it basically shows them that you know, what their opportunity cost. And if they can convert some of the hours they're spending on that non-revenue generating activity work to even some that's revenue generating, that's what pays for the VA. It does require a leap of faith, but that essentially is your migrating work that the time's going to generate revenue to pay for that person. And you know, it's just time and time again, it works, but that calculator just puts it in front of people like, oh my God, I just never— and, and you can play with it and put a number of different scenarios in, which I see people do a lot. You know, we don't, uh, we don't collect, we don't use it for marketing purposes. I just really want people to get it because people that are inspired inevitably come back to us and say, can you help me find somebody that can really do this work for me?

Yeah, makes sense. Well, Elizabeth, people want to connect with you, uh, where would you point them to?

Um, to our website and our company is called Results Resourcing because we resource results. So it's resultsresourcing.net or.com. I love that. And, and I'm also on LinkedIn, Elizabeth Iss, uh, E-I-S-S. And I absolutely love to help people understand how they can leverage the gig economy to scale their businesses.

Oh, I love that. So, well, I think I, I've, I think today I always kind of give my takeaways from the episode. And, you know, I think for today, for the most part, it was just a great reminder. It was more of a deepening of the thing that I've been able to learn over the last several years, is that, you know— and we— I didn't mention this, but it is, um, uh, Who Not How, Dan Sullivan's book Who Not How. I mean, that— this is like right up that alley of that concept of who not how, instead of like, how I going to do this? Well, like, who am I going to go find? And typically we say, oh, you know what, I, I don't have anybody on my team's going to do this. How am I going to find someone? Well, actually, these are the results that I want. Let me just go to, to you guys. So I think, uh, I think that's great. It was a great reminder for me. Elizabeth, we end with— name of the podcast is Above the Business. What do you believe working above the business means to you?

Um, well, I, I listened to a couple of your podcasts before joining you today, and one of, in one of them you mentioned that you can't see the ingredients from inside the jar.

Mm-hmm.

And, and I always love that expression. Um, but I think that, so getting out outside of your business is a really important thing, and getting above your business I think is an important thing too. It's an, it's another dimension. And I happen to really like theater and contemporary dance. And I'm using this as an example because I like to sit in a theater, not in the orchestra, which is kind of ground level, but I like to sit in the first or the second tier because I can see down on the business. I can see down on the dance. I can see the patterns. And one of the things that I think is cool about your operating system, Blueprint Operating System, you know, is it, it is about structure. It is about patterns. And if you don't get outside of the business and above the business, you can't see that. And you'll see where the gaps are, where there is no pattern or there is no structure. So I think that time away gets you out of the weeds and, and helps you get a better perspective on the business. And it's also really important, um, in terms of getting above the business is to get out there with the clients you wanna serve. And hear what they're telling you, you know, not from the lens of what you offer, but what are, what are the problems that they're solving and how can you, with your current services or different services, serve them in a way that's consistent for you? So I think those are all good things to think about.

Yeah, great imagery there of being— my daughter is, uh, is big into dance, so I can absolutely relate to being in the, in the upper deck for sure. So Elizabeth, been great having you on. Thank you so much, and, uh, hope to have you back on in the future.

Oh, I would love that, Bradley. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much.

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