Business Consulting Without the Fluff: Lessons from Crayola Exec & Author Peter Christian

Are we live? We're live! Welcome everyone. I just want to say before we start, I'm also live on Chatter Social, so if I'm looking down, it's just looking at the room to see if I need to bring someone into it. Peter was nice enough to say try it, Adrian. So we are live on Chatter Social, we're live on LinkedIn, we're live on X, and we're live on Adrian Barker Speaks Facebook page. This man here, we know he's brave, we know he's bold. Again, I can't tell if he's got a little baldness going on, maybe, maybe a little bit, a little bit. But he's brilliant, so he passed. He's a 3 Bs, a triple B in the house. Welcome Peter Christian! Peter, hi!

Thanks for having me.

I have no idea who you are. Tell us about yourself.

Okay, well, I am a somewhat retired person, although people say that I'm busy, busier, and they're probably now than when I worked full-time. But I was a director at a major corporation, Crayola Corporation, left there and went into consulting and started my own consulting firm, which still goes strong even after I retired 6 years ago. In that time, I've written and published 2 books. I do podcasts just like the one we're doing now. I write quite a bit besides the books for Medium and for LinkedIn and for various publications. I teach project management course for certification for people for project management. I'm on a couple of educational boards at Rutgers University and at at Alvernia University. And then I have some fun. I do things like kayaking and going to shows and, and fairs and so forth. So as you can see, I'm a pretty busy person.

I love it. And I think you told me— hold on for one second, I'm going to ask Alan to help me. Hey, Alan, can you give me a second? I'm actually asking my husband to do something for me. Can you come here? I need you for like 25, 30 minutes. Could you think you could do this for me? I have to ask him.

Okay.

Well, I just— if someone comes in, if you see someone coming in here, a little face, can you let me know? Just can you keep an eye on that? Just sit down and relax and just let me know. That's huge. Okay.

Okay.

So first of all, Florida. Have you lived in Florida for long?

Uh, about 6 years.

Did you move to Florida for the specific reason to start Our daughter lives down here, and we had seen her on and off.

She was in the Army, she was posted internationally, and then in different parts of the country. She finally settled in Florida and said, I'd really like to spend more time with you guys, would you consider moving down here? And so we checked it out and said sure. So, so we've done that and it's worked out well. We get together and do quite a bit together. It's always nice when your kids still love you after all these years. I want to do stuff with you. And we found a really nice place. We really enjoy it here.

Okay, so now your website, which we have down, peterchristianbooks.com.

Yes.

How many books?

2 books.

Oh, are we adding more to the books?

Maybe. I've got enough material for a 3rd one. The woman I was working with is trying to convince me to do a 3rd one. And then we just, uh, one of our old neighbors was down here on vacation and he said to me, you really should consider writing your biography. Not that I would want to publish it because I'm not sure that people would really be interested in who I am and that, but you never know. But for your family, for your grandkids, so that they know who you are and what you did and all that. He did that. So he's encouraging me to, so I may wind up writing my own biography and, and giving it to my children and my grandkids.

And that's important.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm thinking about it, thinking about all the things I would include and so forth and how I would structure it. So, so that may be my next venture.

Do that. My dad wanted to have a book so badly and we He hired someone to write it, and— but he passed away before we can make it happen. Yeah, so I really do believe that that is something that makes good sense. So tell us, okay, so your books are— so I'm looking here, actually I'm gonna do this right now. Okay, I'm going to share my screen for those of you that are listening. Um, I'm sharing the screen to Peter Christian's website, which is really cool to me, so that you could kind of get a feeling for it. And if not, then let me see here. There we go. So everything looks good. All right, so Peter, this is interesting. You should see, um, the screen too. So you help companies— Samsung, Sumitomo, Sumitomo. Okay, is that a— what is that?

It's a Japanese firm. They're into a lot of different things. Autos and, and auto parts and electronics. And so—

oh, I think I did hear of that. Peter, I asked my husband to do one job. And Al, I need you to look at the phone. Oh well, they could pop on in a second, so you have to keep looking and then come here and I'll, I'll invite them up. Okay, so you are— what I love is, uh, is helping people grow their business.

Yes.

How?

Well, it depends, you know, depends on where they're at. You know, some companies are just getting started and they have specific needs because they're really getting their feet on the ground. Some have been in the business for a while and they got to a certain point we call plateauing, where they're not growing the way they want to or growing anymore. Maybe they're slightly declining. Some have gotten past the point where They're comfortable with, you know, when they were a small enterprise and they're a fairly significant enterprise now, multi-millions of dollars. So it all depends on what they need. Okay. And you got to be flexible. You got to find out what it is. It's one of those, it's not a one-size-fits-all. I always like to say one-size-fits-all poorly. You don't do that. You don't just give everybody the same information and work with it. You find out what's really going on. What's causing whatever it is that's causing, and then you try to help them to solve it.

Okay, so I love that. So can you give me— I'm just still looking at your website because, you know, I don't do any prep.

Wait, that's right, Peter.

Why am I having trouble finding your books, the two books?

I have no idea. There are, there are sections in there. Oh, there you go.

Wait a second, I had this weird feeling. I, I only did this once in like 250 episodes. What about The Vermin Problem?

Yep, that was book number 1.

Okay, like, what? Can you give us a synopsis of what this book is about very quickly?

Yes. Uh, okay, so when I was in business and mostly as a consultant and dealt with different individuals and companies, you would run across some very strange things. And I would say to my cohorts, you know, something we should write a book and that should be in it someday. And they go, absolutely. Well, when I retired and I hadn't written the book yet, I said, well, maybe now is the time to do that. So there are 12 stories in there from different companies. I do not mention who they are. I don't mention the people's names because it's really unimportant. What's more important is what they were doing or weren't doing and how they succeeded or weren't succeeding. And to get across to people that there's a very fine line between success and failure, okay, all depending on the road you take. So the, the name of the book, What About the Vermin Problem, deals with one of the companies that I was dealing with where we were working on helping them to decide whether to expand their current facility or whether to move into a new one, wherever the case may be. And we decided, my collaborator and I, that they should stay there and just expand and move things around. So we went to make the presentation to them and the owner said, well, what about the vermin problem? And we looked at each other and we said, what vermin problem? And he says, well, we're in an old gristmill, he says, and we have some vermin in here, he said, and where you wanna put the production, which is where their warehousing was. So the vermin were in the warehouse. Okay, we can't have vermin in the production area. And we were like, well, did you ever hear about, you know, putting traps and, you know, getting an exterminator in like all food companies do? They just kind of shook their heads. He shook his head no. But it got across that here we worked with them for 9 months. In 9 months, as we were getting information to help them, to decide on what to do. Not once did it come up that they had a vermin problem. So we're talking about communication and how if you really want to be helped and you want people to help you, you've got to be open and honest and you've got to give them all the information that they need so that they can help you. And if you don't, then you're going to run into stuff like we did, which is now they were stuck. Okay. Bottom line was they didn't do anything. They sat in the same facility for years on end after that until they finally decided to do something and they moved into another old facility, multi-level, which is not what companies do these days. So they just, they weren't listening and doing what they needed to. And you have that sometimes. That's why companies have problems because they think they know better than everybody else. They ask for advice, they don't take the advice. And then they fail. So that was just one of a number of stories, but I thought it was catchy title, gets people's interest.

It is a catchy title. I love it. So do you see this problem more prominently in family-owned businesses?

Yes and no. Even in big multinational companies, you know, because people who might have started, you know, in a small business and grew it to be very large and maybe it's not privately owned anymore, it's public now. They tend to either think they know everything or they get lost or they lose contact because now it's so big that they can't keep the daily contact that they had once before when it was a small enterprise. So it's a variety of things, but some of the big ones, you know, that you had flashed in front of us, They have major problems too with communications and with people who think they know everything and don't, and they won't take advice. And maybe they're the problem, and they certainly don't want to hear that. Okay. So there's a variety of different things, but sometimes it's the bigger companies that are bigger pain than the little guys.

I believe every company, no matter where they are, if they're just starting and working on their on their— oh my God, the business plan, or they've been in business, that they should do a SWOT analysis of their business. Do you agree or disagree?

Oh yeah, I can't tell you how many companies, when we would sit down to talk about what their needs are and we say, well, how— or I would say, well, how does that fit with your business plan or your strategic plan? And I get that blank, you know, deer in the headlights look like, oh, we don't have that. And it's like, well, how do you operate then? How do you know where you're going? How do you know when you've achieved where you want to go so that you can now move on to the next thing? And that they really have no clue. And that's a big problem. So absolutely, SWOT, a big thing. Strategic plan, a big thing. In some cases, business plan, especially if you're starting up, okay, to have a business plan. God knows how you would get investors without one because that's a necessity. And a good business plan. I was just talking to my son who is a physical therapy assistant, and he was given charge by his company to start a new enterprise, and he was giving me information. I said, that's a good start, but you really need to turn this into a business plan. Okay, and you need to get that in front of the owners and all that stuff. So he worked on it. I gave him a copy of one that I had done. So he could see what the kind of information was that was necessary. And he told me what he had and I told him what he still needed and so forth. So there was an established business that was getting into new venture, still needed a business plan. Okay, what, where, who, when, why, how, all those good things.

100%, 100%. It's so surprising to me that people are not doing that. All right. So I want to go back because I find I love the book so you can buy this book. You guys, you can download a free sample on the website. Start reading now.

And there's book number 2, Influences and Influencers.

Oh wait, are there a lot of titles like with that, using that? How our relationships affect and shape us. More.

Tell us more. So the lady who was helping with the first book to get it organized in that, as we're going through it, she says, so what's your second book going to be about? And I gave her that deer-in-the-headlights look like, well, there is no second book. And she goes, nobody ever writes just one book. So I started to think about it and I said, okay, so how do I think the way I think? And how do other people think the way they think? What influences that? It can be the circumstances that they run across, okay, the day-to-day types of things. And it can be the people in their lives, whether it's their working cohorts, whether it's affiliates that they have. Maybe it was through school, through their professors or their instructors or their teachers. So I started to think about that. And the more I thought, maybe this should have been the first book is, you know, how do we make decisions? How do we think the way we think? Why do we act the way we act? Okay. And then get into, okay, now here are the end results of that. But it doesn't matter. If you put one in front of the other, it doesn't matter which one you read first. Because I think they're both important. And they're important not just to the business world, I think they're important to our daily lives. We're making decisions every day, we're working with people every day, we're coming across things every day. You know, we have, we have to take the right path in order to be successful at whatever it is that we're doing. And that's true in your everyday life as it is in your business life. So I think that it's got a good relation to everyday life. And in fact, a lot of people who've read the book and commented back to me said it helped them in their everyday lives, and they came across instances not exactly the same, of course, as what I talked about, but very similar. Okay, and now they had a better idea how to handle things and how to move ahead. So, so I was really happy about that. So when I talk about it, Even though they were written for business and about business, they really have everyday life implications.

That's so interesting. So first of all, when did you write this book on influencers?

Influencers and Influencers about 3 years ago and Vermin Problem about 4 to 5. They've been out for a bit.

Did AI help you?

No, no, AI wasn't a big deal then. Okay, it was all PC.

It was all— you know, it's funny, I think, um, first of all, let's welcome Annalise. She came into the room, so very excited. Annalise, thank you for, um, supporting this because I, I wanted to see what it would be like to do the live podcast. So we're live on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Chatter Social, which I absolutely love. So when I think of influencers, I mean, I could say my dad was a big influencer, my mom was a big influencer, If I go out to a great restaurant and then I share it with 3 friends, I'm an influencer. But people have it so— because of the Instagram and the TikTok and the YouTube, they've kind of, you know, changed that name. But I love, I love how you have the book and what that really means. And it reminds me too, Peter, of how important it is, no matter what we do in life, that you never know that your influence could be negative.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Or positive.

Or positive.

I worked with a fellow and we lost contact with each other. He went to different company, different job and that. And about a year or so ago, we kind of hooked back up again. And he wrote the nicest letter to me about how positive an impact I had on him and his professional life. And how thankful he was. Now, we didn't talk about it when that happened, but yet he held that and then he shared it with me. So again, you never know what impact you're going to have on somebody's life. And again, hopefully it's positive. Like you said, it could have a negative and you hope that that doesn't happen. And if so, you want to know, you know, so that you can help to correct it because sometimes you give bad advice. Okay. Sometimes people don't take the advice and deal with it the way they should. Sometimes they don't at all. I had one instance of a company, okay, we did all sorts of productivity improvements with them. We then wanted to help them to implement the stuff and they said, no, no, we have it, we can do it. And it was like half a million dollars. So it wasn't like chump change. All right, a year goes by and I get a call from a person I was working with and he says, They are very unhappy with the results of, you know, what you provided to them. And I said, oh, well, why is that? You know, what have they implemented and how has it not worked? He says, well, they haven't implemented anything. And I sat there with the deer-in-the-headlights look again. And I said to him, why are we having this conversation? They haven't done anything. They expected things to change. And when they didn't, because they're doing the same things they were doing when we were with them. They're disappointed. I said, really? I said, really? Are we having this conversation? I said, you need to go back to them and tell them, get on the stick. If you're not going to implement it, get Pete and his crew back in and they will help you to implement. But a year went by and you haven't done anything. So how crazy is it? And that was just one instance, okay? And again, a fairly significant company in the aerospace industry. And you just shake your head and go, wow. And a big, big name company too. Big name, not like a family-owned little enterprise.

So Peter, Peter, I'm a very positive person, but let's talk a little negative because I think that people need to hear this. I find— let's, let's go back and forth. I'm going to start, you go— where negative influence could look like in a business. I personally think that that when people say, I don't care, yes, I don't care what people think about me, I think that that is not uplifting and like, oh, what a great thing. And I think to myself, oh shoot, if they don't care, they may not care the service that they're providing. They may not care about the quality of the service they're providing. I absolutely, I 100% I don't care what people are talking about me, what they think of me. And so what do you say to that?

Absolutely. And I do that in my class. At the end of the class, one of the things we do is what I call a postmortem, just like you do on a project where you review the project to find out what went right and what went wrong so you can do the right things again, you know, in the next project and avoid the wrong things. And I asked the students, How could this class be better? And they give me, you would say, positive comments back, you know, but you can take it negative too. Well, you didn't do this or you didn't cover that or— and I take that and I go, hmm, they were right. All right. And I make change and I've made a number of changes to my coursework because of the comments that my students had. All right. It didn't help them, but it certainly helps the next bunch of folks coming along. And I point that out to them. Okay. Now, the other side of that is you get criticisms, you get comments, you get whatever from all sorts of people, and it can drive you crazy. All right. And if you get so bogged down in that, that you don't make a move because you're always afraid, oh, well, I might offend somebody or they may take it the wrong way or, you know, it might not work. Then you'll be afraid to do anything. So you move ahead and what you need to do is, again, communication. You keep checking, are you still on board with this? Is it making sense to you? What are you doing to do this? Okay, what more can I do to help? Do you understand? You know, that type of thing. Because again, as a consultant, what I say to people is, I am there to help you, but I am not there to do it for you. At the end of the day, it's up to you. Okay, you are going to make the difference. You're going to make the change because I'm going to go away. You're going to pay my bill. You're going to take whatever information I had given you, and either you're going to apply it or you're not going to apply it. You're going to apply it well, you're not going to. And if you don't get it as we're going along, I need to know that so we can stop and go, okay, timeout. What is it you're not getting? Or what is it, you know, that you don't think is right, or whatever the case may be. And let's get it corrected because we want to have a successful engagement. I feel as strongly about it as you do. Granted, it's your business, but it's my business too, because guess what? I'm hoping that you'll tell the next person what a great person I was and how they should use me. All right. And if you don't do that, then I did something wrong. All right. So you've got to be very, very careful. I have a friend who is Indian. He was one of the co-owners of the business, and he would go to all his friends who were numerous, all Indian, and he would get 10 different opinions on something. Well, in the Indian culture, when they give you their opinion, they expect you to take it. Well, what happens when you have 10 different opinions? From friends and you only take one of them? Are you going to tick off the other 9 where they're not going to talk to you anymore? And he would do that and he'd go nuts. And I go, you got to stop doing that, okay? Because again, you're going to tick people off. You need to find whatever makes sense, explain it to others why you may or may not be doing what they suggested, why you picked the one you did, not because of favoritism, but it makes the most sense to you, and you move on. And you got to do the same thing as a non-Indian person. Otherwise you drive yourself crazy.

I like that. I think that it really is important. First, I love the fact that you're in accountability. So you're saying if you're not doing it, I can't do my work right. I actually do that too with my clients because if they're not following the pattern or if they're not— I do a lot of LinkedIn for them and if they're not following up on the leads or the warm leads, whatever that looks like. So I really loved your throwing in the accountability. Important piece. I want to go back to the negativity though, because I think that a lot of people don't realize the vermin could be humans. Oh yeah, I know that a lot of times people will say, oh, Sally, Sally's just a Cancer in our office and she's so miserable, she's making everybody miserable. I've also seen, oh my God, look at Shelley, she bounces in like Tigger, always happy, it's so annoying. And then people don't like it if you're too happy and you're too bouncy and you're just excitable. So it's, it's really difficult. But the reason why I'm bringing this up is for influencing. So just another negative that people don't talk about is you can have a successful company, but maybe you never called your own company.

Yeah, how can I help you?

You call Bob's Plumbing and you're the owner. Like, so I think the owners need to call their own company, see how they're being answered, See what the answering service is doing if you're using an answering service, which seems really old. How your robot is doing if you've got an AI robot. Like, I don't think that people understand that, but that could be a turnoff in calling a business or walking into a restaurant and the two hostesses are talking and they're talking and talking and they look at you, they don't acknowledge you, and all of a sudden you're like, why am I even here? I shouldn't be here. That hurts the business. So can you talk a little bit about that? I know you want to twist it into a positive, but let's go negative. Let's go down the negative road for a few minutes because I think there's a lot to learn from the different things that you have seen and the challenges, because negativity is going to be there. But how do you advise the owner if you call and you're like, that doesn't sound like a good receptionist? I know that word is old, receptionist, but take it away.

I encourage them to talk to the people who work under them because, again, in a lot of cases, they're very busy. Again, the business has grown, they're into other things, they don't get involved in the day-to-day details. But when you get away from that and you lose that contact, that can be dangerous. So I encourage them to get out on the floor and talk to the folks. I can't tell you how many times I would go to do something. I'd be talking to the folks on the floor and they go, "Huh, they never listen to us. We have all sorts of ideas and they tell us just be quiet and just do whatever it is you're supposed to be doing. And yet we're doing things that are wrong." Okay. Or they say, "I had a great idea and they took it and I never got credit for it." You know, also, or Oh, here we go again. You know, they always tell us we're going to do something and it's kind of like the flavor of the month club and then they never follow through. So why should we help you? Help me again. Why should we do it? I'm helping them because they're never going to follow through with it and then they'll be on to the next one. You can't do that. All right. And again, your experts are the people who are in the trenches who are doing everything. And doing it day in and day out. Now granted, they're going to be wrong on some stuff too, so you don't just follow everything that they recommend. But if you don't listen to them, if you don't know what's going on, how are you going to direct the company beyond where it's at today? That's why you hit your plateau. That's why you stall. That's why you run into problems and, and so forth. Um, and again, sometimes The owners, the bosses are the biggest problem when you want to talk about negativity and they don't see it. They're blaming everybody else under the sun. I can't tell you how many times I would go into a company and go, "Oh, those people on the floor, they don't do what they're supposed to and they're da da da da da." And you go and you talk to the folks on the floor and they say, "Do you know what they put us through?" They said, "We get information and then like 2 hours later, we get different information." Okay. And they tell us to break down the line and set it up. And we do, and we just about get done setting it up. And they say, oh, break it down. You know, now you need to run this. And we do that. And then, and then at the end of the day, all we've done is changeovers. And they complain that we didn't get any production out. All right. Or the system is bad. The system's giving them bad information. They go to look, and my daughter's going through that right now. She works for a very large company. They're constantly having problems with bad information getting out to the floor or to the warehouse or whatever. And she's constantly working on correcting that stuff. Okay, that's what the best systems in the world, okay, they're spending, you know, they're using the SAPs and so forth. And they're still having problems. So you got to stay on it. I used to get criticized as I went up in the ranks for getting into the minutia. And people would say, oh, you can't do that. And I'd say, Well, when somebody comes to me with a problem and they ask my opinion, how am I going to give them a good opinion if I don't know what's going on? Now, I'm not trying to micromanage, but I'm just trying to understand what the heck is happening. Okay. And I did. And people, people respected me for it. They thanked me for it. Okay. And I think it helped to make me an effective person. It certainly helped as a consultant then because I knew how to ask the right questions.

Okay, so my last question to you.

Sure.

And I've been loving talking.

Am I being negative enough for you?

Negative for the positive, Adrian. I really am positive.

Okay.

But okay, yeah, this is a little negative.

All right.

I, I'm seeing a younger generation.

Yes.

Who maybe know Instagram, maybe know TikTok more than you and I. Call themselves a business coach or business consulting, but they've never really been in business. They never started their own business. They never worked for a business. They, they really don't know. And yeah, does it irritate me? It just makes— I just shake. It doesn't irritate me in life. There's more things, but I, I'm— I question, like, how do you have wisdom? So, like, with all your years of working in businesses, what would you say if you were up against— now you're up against a 24-year-old influencer, true, like, you know, Instagrammy, and, and the company says to you, I don't know, Peter, it's between you and Sally Sue, and, you know, Sally's a business coach too, and she does consulting. Who, who should I go with? What would make more sense? How would you actually answer that question?

Okay, well, first of all, to go back to the background, When I was coming out of school, I had a job offer from this little firm called PricewaterhouseCoopers. Okay, they're now PricewaterhouseCoopers. Okay, and it was to be a consultant. Now, I was at the top of my class in school and that, and I thought I knew a lot, but I had no practical experience. And I said to myself, self, you're gonna go into a room with somebody who's worked in industry for 20 years or whatever, and they might be a vice president or what, and you're going to tell them what they're doing wrong. And they're going to go to you based on what? What experiences do you have that you're telling me that? And the answer is none. Okay, because I went to school for, you know, 8 years doing my bachelor's and master's. So I said, I'm not going to get into the consulting route at this point. So I went out and I worked for industry for close to 20 years. And then when I was looking to do a career change, somebody said, you know, you've been a consultant in your companies for all this time, you should really consider going into consulting. And I thought to myself, hmm, I think I'm ready to do that. Because now when they ask me, based on what I can go back and go, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba ba. And I can give them all sorts of details and, you know, how, you know, how things work and how things didn't work because Again, we're not, you know, perfect. We make mistakes and we learn from it and we make corrections and so forth. And I can do that for them. So when I'm faced with a choice like you have of, is it this person or is it that person, I try to find out what the job is that they're going to do, what their background is with it, what kind of experiences they have. And I'm going to go with the more experienced person who's been down that road. Maybe they haven't done exactly the same stuff, but again, pretty close to it, or they're flexible enough that they can adapt. And that's the person I'm going to go with. Back when it used to be a personality contest or, you know, based on their pedigree, what school did you graduate from and what was your grade point average? It doesn't mean anything when you're in business. That lasts for about 6 months. I told my daughter that. I said, that lasts for 6 months. After that, it's who are you? What are you doing? What are you accomplishing? What are you moving ahead on? They don't care what the past was. Okay. And they shouldn't, quite honestly. I graduated back in the '70s. Somebody is going to ask me, well, what my grade point average was back in the '70s? Doesn't matter anymore. What have I done since then? What have I accomplished? Who have I helped? What were their successes? What were some of my failures? You don't like to talk about it. But you do, because we learn as much from our failures as we do from our successes, maybe sometimes more so. Okay. And I can bring that to the party and I can say, and that's why I'm telling you or advising you what it is you need to do. And if you do it, chances are good you will be successful. Again, no guarantees, because things change, things happen, and you got to stay up on it. But chances are a lot better that you're going to succeed than you're going to fail.

I am so glad that a couple of years ago, the FTC, I think, has laid their foot down and said no more, you know, making these promises, no more showing receipts or showing like just numbers and saying this is how much— like that whole thing that was so crazy during 2020. I was like, what is going on? And I knew right away, I'm like, Like, no way. This is just so glad that they put their foot down and said, you cannot do that. I really enjoyed talking with you. I think that this is great. We, those of us that are seasoned perfectly well, seasoned, some of us. So just before we go though, so what kind of business, like what is your niche? What is the favorite business, maybe business size industry that you love to work with, that they can reach out to you. And was there a— did you have a link to your calendar on your site? I don't remember seeing.

I don't think so. But we can give you or we can give them my email address if you want. I think it's on my website, but if not, we can give that to them as well.

OK, I'll put that in the— I'll put that in the notes in the show notes.

Or I'm on LinkedIn, and they can send me a note on LinkedIn and say, I heard you on the No Prep Needed podcast. And, you know, this was interesting, or I disagree with that, or whatever, whatever the case may be. I'd like to talk to you some more. And that'll be fine. I'd love to do that. Um, where was I at? Just kind of lost my train of thought for a second.

I know you're still working. But I did want to say that if you ever thought of you know, kind of offering volunteering, you would be great at SCORE. And the SCORE team out of the Tampa market is lovely. If you ever thought of SCORE, I did 8 years with SCORE, was the chairwoman, and then decided, you know, because you can't, you can't, you can't blend business, you know, so you have to be separate. But it really did kind of fine-tune my coaching and mentoring skills. And then You know, just an FYI, or if you decide to go full-time into retirement, they could use you.

I remember what you asked me. You asked me what my niche was and the kind of the size of the company that I was kind of comfortable with. When I was in consulting, we kind of geared to the $50 to $200 million company. Although if you saw some of the names on there like Sumitomo and Samsung, they're way beyond, you know, that range. So some larger, and there were some smaller that were below $10 million. And what areas? Mostly manufacturing, because that was where my background was, and that's why I studied what I studied and went into what I, I did and what my kind of career path was like, as opposed to the systems and so forth. I was really the manufacturing on the floor type guy and so forth. So those are my comfort spots. But if somebody has a need and I can provide it, great. And if not, I've got enough contacts that I can probably steer them in the right direction to somebody who can help them.

So I love that. I love that. And I'm sure we have the Volusia Marketing— I'm a Volusia Manufacturers Association, so you definitely should be reaching out to the ones in your backyard. I love that. I enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for playing with me today.

Thank you for having me.

I'll have to, uh, It's good. Once it gets to V2, I'll pre-arrange these. But this is great. This will be turned into a podcast in a couple of weeks. Okay, live will be out there. I'm gonna go back in though and just tag you on the live so we can connect together.

So do you want my email address?

Oh yes, let me, let me, let me put it right here in the— oh, I have your email because you used it to make your—

yeah, I did.

Okay, is that the same?

Yes. Okay, and they can get in touch with me that way.

I love it. You're a nice guy. I look forward to, uh, hopefully meeting with you one day. I'm so jealous too. The Tampa market, you have like the greatest restaurants and the coolest—

hey, yes, a lot of good things in Tampa. Yeah, that's why we wound up here.

We're in Daytona Beach, so we're across.

Okay, so we're on the Right coast. You're on the—

I know, I know. Yeah, on the— I totally— yeah, yeah, it's not funny. Okay, now, so thank you so much. I'm gonna end the stream. It's been wonderful, and have a great rest of the week too.

Thank you. I'm heading off on vacation soon.

Oh, Peter, where are you going?