GA 603 | The Culture of Calm with Gui Costin

Leaders know this because I've done it before many times where you sort of go to somebody, sort of make an issue of something passive aggressively to get to someone else. What I'd rather do is accentuate the positive of certain performers, how people do things, accentuate that so people play up to that level versus beating people down.

Today I am very excited to welcome Guy Kosson to the show. Now this is a good one, folks. I really, really enjoyed this podcast. So it's not your typical talk about lean and continuous improvement type podcast, but it is all about business and people and how to get the best out of people. So I feel like it's perfectly aligned with all the things that we're normally talking about. But as you'll hear today, Guy and I really kind of get into his experience with running multiple companies and he's been very successful with. We get a little geeky talking about things like ARR and annual recurring revenue, which is. It's interesting because geese businesses are very similar to what we do here at Gamba Academy with our sort of like our subscription based business and all the rest of it. So it was really interesting talking to him because I felt like I was sort of like looking in the mirror in some. In some ways. But what we really kind of hone in on is what Guy would call a culture of calm and was really fascinating to me. I'm not sure I've heard a lot of people talking about this, but he was really kind of getting into how they go about running their company with this culture of comm. They've got really interesting things such as they don't have a vacation policy or they don't have a time off policy or anything like that. It's just sort of a get your work done and bring your best day in and day out. And you'll hear, you might be thinking like, how could that ever work? People will take advantage of that. But what you'll have to hear is just sort of Guy explain how it does work and why he wouldn't do it any other way. So again, a really, really good episode. I enjoyed it. Show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 603 and please make sure that you scroll down and go connect with guy over on LinkedIn or whatever. We're gonna have everything linked up and tell them thanks for coming on. This one was a lot of fun. Okay, enough for me. Onto the show. Guy, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Good, good. Thanks for having me on.

Where are you calling in from?

I'm calling in from the great state of New Hampshire. We're up here on a lake and up here through August. Just working from here. So I'll be down in Philly this week, but headquarters in Philly, but I'm in New Hampshire.

Nice. Nice. Awesome. All right, well, as you know, we like to get our shows started with our guest sharing a quote. So what do you got?

So one of my favorite quotes is from my uncle, who's a life coach in la, and his quote is, those who get reality fastest when.

What's that mean to you?

That means basically, as soon as you are in a situation and you accept the fate of the. The reality of the situation and you act on it. Whereas a lot of people get in situations and they don't want to acknowledge, like, the situation they're in. And so they either delay decision making, they waste time, they're sort of in denial, blame, and so. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's much more of like a denial thing. And I think that over time, those who kind of get the reality fastest win. And I've always followed that. And it's always been an incredible. It's always been an incredible way to be because once you kind of get the way things are versus the way you want them to be. Right. You have to look at the world as they are and react accordingly. And we actually turn that into a Dakota ism called we grow apples. We sell them to apple buyers. We don't grow apples and sell them to orange buyers. We're not in the convincing business. So you're not trying to convince people to buy your apples. Right. You're just going to try to find that. And that, to me, is that that's just accepting reality. Right. Hey, you guys have a great product. Doesn't fit for us. Great. Take no for an answer. Move on. A lot of people want to be in a convincing business. Yeah.

Oh, I love it. Very good. All right, well, hey, tell us a little bit about your background, guy. Tell us how you got into your line of business and what that line of business is.

Sure. So I got into. It's a very funny kind of. It's a big business, but it's a funny kind of job because you have all these investment firms right Today. It's like private equity, hedge funds, private credit. Those are kind of the firms that have been growing massively the past 15 years. After the great financial crisis 1997, I went to work of those firms raising capital for their funds and developed a whole process of the way of doing things. And in 2006 started Dakota to do that on an outsourced basis. So not as an employee, but as a contracted employee. 1099 and we have an eight person sales team that work with investment firms and raise capital for their funds. That's going strong today. But in 2019, we took the database that we used to raise roughly $30 billion for our CL and we commercialize that. And six years later we have roughly 1250 investment firms and about 57 fundraisers that use our CRM based data to go out and set up meetings with investors around the globe.

Wow. Okay, fantastic. That's some big numbers. So. All right, well, hey, let's jump into to the topic of the day. So we. So as we were talking about before we hit record, you know, our audience is sort of, we're into this continuous improvement and lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, these sorts of things. So we're all about sort of improving businesses and making things better and respecting people along the way. And sounds like you've done the same thing and you've had a lot of success with, with some prior businesses. And I'm wondering if you could just talk. Maybe we'll start with the whole idea of culture and again, creating a sort of a strong continuous improvement. Culture is what we're all about within our community. So I'm wondering if you could maybe tell us a little bit about your perspective on how that's gone.

Sure. This is. I'm writing a book called Be Kind, my third book and I've given over the years I've given a lot of thought to this. It's been absolutely not perfection in any way, shape or form. So the book's more about lessons learned and to simplify, I believe you should have. Our goal is to have a very kind culture while also be super hard charging, so wanting to get after it every single day, but do it with kindness. And as a 58 year old, over the years you see all different styles of leadership and a lot of leadership styles revolve around the leader not maybe having as much discipline for what comes out of their mouth. Because I think at the end of the day, culture is how the leader treats people and how you treat people is the words that come out of your mouth would you choose to say and not to say. And so if you're thinking about continue. But, but the challenge there is in order to be kind, you have to eventually if you break it down, you have to have vulnerability. And if you believe that organizations should be designed to keep their best people for as long as they can, if not forever. People leave bosses, not companies. And so if you have great teammates that you work with and you treat them with kindness and then they walk out the door with all this institutional knowledge, well, now you've lost, right? So it's not good for anybody. It's not good for your organization, it's not good for your customers, it's not good for employee morale. It's not even good for that individual. Right? And so I've given a lot of thought to how we treat people, but we don't sacrifice professionalism, excellence, or this hard charge in getting after it, competing every single day. But what that translates into is not demeaning people not letting you say whatever comes out of your mouth, not making like little jokes here and there, which we've all had bosses do that to us or say little flip remarks that they think they're being funny, but they're actually not. It's actually hurting people. And since you spend the most amount of your time at work versus at home, I believe leaders have a responsibility to, you know, it's like playing with fire, right? Because if someone has a bad day or, you know, what have you, it's because how they're being treated. And then if I treat people in a certain way, what I've seen is the cascading effect where they all treat one another the way I treat them. And so I don't do any of that normal Dilbert style or the office type, you know, stuff that we all know about where I'll give you a good for instance, okay, because this is the, this is a great one where everyone can resonate with this. I pick up the phone, I call one of our sales guys on a Friday at 1, not even thinking it's Friday at 1. I'm just calling, I have a question and they answer and they're like, oh, hey, I'm actually on the second hole. You know, can I call you back? I'm like, no problem. Hit them. Well, have fun. That's how I react. Most bosses might say something like this, oh, must be nice, must be nice. I'm in the office and you're out there playing golf, right? So extrapolate that across a thousand different scenarios. That's what you don't want to be. You don't want to be that guy. And you also don't want to be that guy that says, oh, we'll have fun, but when you get back, we have to have a serious conversation right now. If the building is burning down, it's probably a different story. We all know that. But there's different ways to handle the same situation. That has a very good impact and positive impact on the teammate versus, you know, tearing at the fabric of that relationship. And so that, that's what I think of it. It applies to any organization. I would say it applies to the Jiffy Lube, right? We have a four or five person team, right? Changing oil, the whole thing, how they, you know, how the boss treats them, right to a pizza shop, to a sales organization, to a manufacturing plant, right to a law firm, like, you name it, right? It's, it's the same for everybody.

I wonder if we could go back. You mentioned kindness, and it's a simple word, be kind. But there's a lot of depth to the idea or the art of kindness. Like, for example, is it the same as being nice? Like, what does kindness mean to you?

Yeah, it's the opposite. It's actually kind. Being nice is being unkind. Because being nice is not. You're not dealing with the thorny issues on the table. Listen, I'm not saying we're going to get in there every single day and we're not going to have tough conversations because part of what you guys do in Six Sigma is exactly what we do in a similar way. Because dealing with personal biases in a company, you're dealing with people who are anchored to something that happened to them in the past, and they can't shake that. So they're applying that anchored sort of positioning to what's going on today. And the nice is evil. Being nice is evil. And it's evil because you're, you're not doing what's in the best interest of your teammates and treating each other right. So, for instance, I have a situation. I got this this week. I talked to Rob. He had to have a conversation with someone. I said, look, go in with intense compassion to understand what's going on, right? Just have intense compassion. And I. Not that he wouldn't have, but I said, we don't want to go in. Just pissed off that things aren't working and this, you know, there's been like a little hiccup or something. So he went into intense compassion to understand that person's position. He understood it like, okay, follow up with an email. Tell me where, where you think we could restructure this to be more helpful. And they walked away. It was a very, very positive outcome. But it's going in that's kind. Going in with intense compassion. As we know, you're a leader You're a boss teammate. A lot of times it's like, I've got the power. I don't really care how they take it. You know, I'm going to come in with a blunt instrument. I'm just going to say whatever I want to say and. Right. And so it just requires vulnerability and thoughtfulness. But being nice is because if you're trying to be nice, you don't, you don't address the issues that are actually in their best interest. Thus you're actually letting your teammates down. Now, you don't need to go hardcore and like demean and insult people. Like, that's not the answer. Right. But I open up my, I open up my book with a very crass line. And I want to, I don't want to say it on your podcast, but I said, you know, it's easy to be a D. And because it is. Right? It's just easy. Right. If you just want to say what comes to your mind. Right. That's easy. Doesn't require much discipline, just pops out. Right. But one word can crush people. And is that really what you want to create for your organization? And so leaders need to worry about those words.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. No, that's good stuff, man. And what about, what are your thoughts on like, I don't know, personality types and the, and how they play into how sort of people communicate with one another? Because you might have a hardcore extrovert who just loves to talk and hear their voice out there in the world and you have a very, very deep introvert who just doesn't like to hear anybody's voice. Right. Like, how do you. How does that play into this.

AI for me, one man's opinion has more dramatically impacted, you know, like the neural network of your brain of learning something. You're able to get a PhD level answer to any question that you put out there very deeply, very quickly. So why do I bring that up? Is because as people do their jobs, okay. They develop certain traits and characteristics as they do their job. So if you're familiar with what you have a recurring revenue business ARR SaaS, everyone thinks that these two concepts can be related, so. But they can't. The account executive who makes a sale, who generates the first initial recurring revenue, and then the CSM who then answers questions, helps people. Typically call it customer success. What I've learned is that the day to day activities, and I mean I can go deep on the day to day activities, how they enter information to salesforce, how they don't, how the whole thing Couldn't be more opposite. Thus you might say to yourself, okay guy, when you're talking about personality types, then can we ask a CSM to do an account executive type work? During the course of that one year contract they can do one thing which is broadly based, which is answer customer questions, create reports, whatever that might be. That's where it ends. They don't have the ability, but so as you run these organizations, you start to learn the actual job literally changes people's personalities and develops skill sets. And if you're not acutely aware and really study what those skill sets are, then you start saying to yourself, well, I can have the CSM also sort of be the AE during the life of the contract and sell them and upgrade and get them. Then you realize, wait a second, that's not that personality type that makes them genius at service. They don't have the genius sales gene. And it's not maybe before they took the job that they wouldn't. It's just the nature of the job. Service, incoming reactive questions, sales account executive, proactive outreach, having to have immediate follow up, like if the follow up isn't X number of minutes within the first 24 hours, like a 50% chance of sale goes nowhere. So incredibly tenacious, politely, persistently, the exact opposite. So that was just one area of a company where you think these two things are related. And I've learned the very, very hard way, they're not related at all. And what is the net result of that? Sometimes these accounts, if they're not asking to be serviced, can just get lost because they're not asking for help. Thus the CSM is not covering them even though you're doing the QBRs right. And so I've just learned my lesson. Where there's a concept of a renewal, there's also a concept of a resell. And I think you actually need to be reselling. Day one, the contract signed is my big takeaway. So that's just one area where these personal biases, but also the nature of the job builds these neural networks of, you know, that it's, it's almost like if they started here every day they do indigenous job, their skill sets separate like this. And it's just something to be aware of.

Yeah.

That I've learned.

Now something that I know that you're fond of talking about is the culture of calm. What is that all about?

I think that is that calm or low Vol is like versus the fire drill is how I think a company should be modeled. You're always going to have Your emergencies, your stressful situations where there's an all hands on deck or whatever it might be, but pick whatever percentage you want. You really should aim to have 80%, 90% of the time at a company, be calm, be low of all. And because high volume stresses people out, if everything's a fire drill, everything's stressful, right? Everything's this, oh my God, you know, and look, some leaders just inherently like to create drama, you know, and it doesn't matter. It's not, it's male, female, it's nothing to do with any of that. It just has to do. You know, a certain guy just, they like drama, you know what I mean? Or they like to create volatility, or if it's too calm, they like to shake things up. And one of my, another great line of one of my great friends and business, successful business people, in some cases, the best idea is to do nothing. And the more you can create an environment of low ball so people can actually focus and be creative. Because it's really hard to be creative when you're stressed out and you're kind of living in the world of reaction. So, and like, what does that mean? How does that, how does calm translate in? Very simply, right? You need really clear core principles of what you stand for, your standards, most people call them core principles, we call them decodisms. You have that, and then you need a certain set of processes and procedures. I mean, my goodness, your audience would not only buy into that because then it's like, okay, you're taking a lot of the variabilities out. You're not recreating the wheel every time. People know how things should get done, and that just creates like that level of calm. Now you have to put on top of that and you have to do this in a controlled environment. You do need to be asking why? Like, what's working, what's not working? Doing that on a monthly basis, you can do it weekly, daily, of course, you're examining. But having, we have a set time, once a month, each group, each division of the company comes together to ask why and what that does, right, that actually furthers the calm. Because if there's some angst within a group that they can't solve for, or they didn't want to ask, or they're embarrassed to ask, or they feel badly, whatever, and then they cough it up during what's working, what's not working session, all of a sudden you're like, hey, I can solve for that. That's your big issue. What if we did this oh my gosh. You would do that? That's amazing. I just think. But now, that doesn't mean we're sacrificing professionalism. That doesn't mean we're sacrificing growth. No way. Right. Because we have to be growing. But we're, we're going to do it in a low ball way.

Yeah. I love it. I love it. Let's switch gears a little bit and talk about, you know, the older that we get, the younger the folks coming into the company seem to be. And so when we think about the millennials and the Gen Z's of the world, talk a little bit about, I don't know, how you sort of manage them and how you sort of get the best out of them and then what are you seeing from them as far as their styles and their personalities and what they're bringing to the table.

So really have tried to create a culture of being cool to them. And what does that mean? So I think of it as, I think you should treat. I'm 58. I think you should treat the younger generation as you would the adult children of your best friends. And so you're not in there making fun of them, teasing them, the whole thing, because they're like, oh, gee's a jerk. He's always coming in. We know those guys, by the way. But the way that you get the most out of them is you treat them like adults and you give them very clear expectations of performance. You give them very clear standards to live by. And when you. And then you treat them like adults and you don't ever manage them. You lead them, but you leave them to get their job done. Covid technology has just kind of blown the standard way of quote unquote working 9 to 5 or 8 to 6, whatever it is. It's changed everything. Unless in your manufacturing plant. Different conversation. Right? But it really is redefined how work gets done. And it can. It could take someone two hours to get their whole job done. It could take people four hours, six hours, an hour and a half, whatever it is, as long as the objectives are clear and expectations are clear and they're executing getting their job done. Right. We have these really cool offices downtown Philly. Everybody comes in. Great coffee, cold brew, snacks, buy lunch once a week. Like, you know, and, and no, there's no manager down there. There's 50 people and there's no manager. And for five years it's worked seamlessly. It proves and, and, and everyone's executing. Why? Because everyone is, knows someone else is counting on Them. And yes, from time to time people show up lame. They might not be as responsive or certain things happen and then it gets addressed like instantaneously because none of them suffer any fools. Right. So if it's not like working out, we, they, they service that very quickly to, you know, me and our president Rob and the whole thing. And as I always say that it's like, look, my job is not to be a babysitter. Right. And this might not be the right culture for you in the interview process. You just have to know our culture is they're going to treat you like an adult. The expectation is you act like an adult. I'm not here to do any beatdowns or motivational speeches. I'm not here to. Leaders know this because I've done it before many times where you sort of go to somebody, sort of make an issue of something passive aggressively to get to someone else. What I'd rather do is accentuate the positive of certain performers, how people do things, accentuate that. So people play up to that level versus beating people down. And I have never had the issue with the millennials like everyone else has had in the Gen Zs. They're extremely hardworking, they get their job done. And the way that you win in this game is in a way, you're living in a relative world of leadership. Meaning those kids have their best friends working in other companies. Those other companies are more traditional than their management style. Leadership style. And then they're having a drink, roommates. Oh my God, this guy's such a jerk. So you guys get coffee and no one's busting you.

Lunch once a week.

What?

Right?

And you're like, okay. And so far it's really worked. Well now I'm a big communicator. I believe in slack and communication and the whole thing. And so it's not that we're not overseeing everything on a kind of hour by hour basis to make sure things are the trains are running on time. Of course we are. But I think this generation gets sold out. Those two generations get sold out pretty aggressively on laziness. Once you're just, you know, all this perks, all this other stuff again, I just haven't seen it. In the time that we've been doing this, I've only seen really top performers that just want to perform.

Yeah. So yeah, it is interesting. So I got, I have, you know, I've got, well, I got seven kids and some of them are grown and married and whatnot. But like my, my 19 year old son, he's a musician and he has a Tick Tock channel because his name's Ryan Price. Pereira Price is his middle name. He goes by Ryan Price. Everybody look him up on Tick Tock. He's got like millions of views, you know, on Tick Tock and he's monetized it and he's making money, let me tell you. And, and so like every day he's really consistent and he'll post his video. It's got to be a minute long, right, or whatever, you know, for the algorithms or whatever it is. But I'm blown away that, you know, in some ways I'm like, oh, you're just lazy or whatever. But, you know, he's getting it done, right? Like he'll, he might make wait till 9 o' clock to do at night to do his video, but he'll get his video done and he gets it posted up. And, and so to me, it's sort of like reframing my mind of like, how what is work, you know, like, and now he's, he's writing songs all throughout the day. So it's not like he's only working for a minute in the evening. But it's very different than when I was 18, 19 years old, you know what I mean? And so I'm wondering what the world's going to look like with this next generation coming into the workforce when, you know, I don't know if my son could, could, in his words, he would say, suffer through a 40 hour workweek, you know what I mean? Because there's a lot of nonsense that probably happens when you force someone to sit somewhere for 40 hours, you know what I'm saying? Like, they're not motivated, they're probably not getting. Whereas your folks might work, I don't know, 30 hours and they get 50 hours of workout because they're highly motivated. Like, what do you think about this whole idea with the, let's call it the Tick Tock generation coming up into the workforce?

Yeah, I think it's crazy cool what your son's doing, right? I mean, he's obviously right. He's, he's interested, makes him feel good, right? He's creating, he's adding value. He likes creating music. I mean, yeah.

You know, he signed to a label as well, so it got him recognized and all the rest of it. So. Yeah, yeah.

And listen, I can hear your voice. It's not easy, you know, and my whole goal was kids just finding their own path, right. And you guide them along the way and try to not judge it's the same way that I think at work, try to avoid the judgment. Yeah, right. Judgment free zone.

Yep.

You know, because we'll always, you know, and then just always accentuate the positive or the focus, what the expectations are, what good, you know, I'm always into this term and define what good looks like. So do I think the nature of work is changing? Do I think that AI is making being more intellectual and thoughtful more important? 1 billion percent right. Do I think AI is eliminating people that are being paid 100 bucks an hour to do something and then having to do five or ten dollars an hour jobs? Is it eliminating that? Yes, it's a great thing. So the more intellectually curious you are, the more you're going to win. And I think the more domain expertise you have, the more you're going to win. I think that the more life experience you have, you have a way bigger opportunity to win because you're going to be able to intellectually interact with these LLMs that other people won't have the domain expertise or the life experience. So I actually think it's going to people like, it's going to dumb people down. I said, no, it's not. I have a concept, Ron, that I want to write about. Blog. I have a concept. So I'm going to tell my ghostwriter, this is my concept. Okay. This is what I want to communicate. I work in the investment industry and I want to communicate a message that in raising money, everyone's worried about just getting disrupted by AI. And I'm going to tell you that in order to raise money, you have to get face to face. Why? Because there's a fiduciary duty on behalf of the allocator who's making the investment to meet the investor, have to meet them face to face. Then they have to tell a story because they have to be sold. Those investments aren't bought. So anyway, I did that over the weekend just as messing around and I said to chat, just write, you know, write me a blog post on this. Wrote it, I went in, I made some edits, give it. The so vernacular was consistent with me and the whole thing. I did it, boom. And I posted it. Right? The message was, hey, my industry colleagues, it's going to be all good. Unless they're going to stop meeting with investors face to face and learning about them, we're going to have a job. AI will not disrupt the physical and face to face interaction. Meaning. So does it mean that I needed to. Did I get hurt because I didn't put in the Eight hours of writing and rewriting and proofreading and writing and writing. No, I mean, I can write, but I wanted to get a message across, right. And now that I have a ghostwriter called, you know, you know, called ChatGPT, that ghost rated for me and then I edited it and I, and everyone liked the post, it's like, yeah, that felt really good. It just reminded us, right? Stick to it, keep getting face to face. So it's much more intellectual than I would have, than people think that LLMs are doing to us.

Yeah. So maybe to wrap things up, Guy, I'm wondering if we could, if you could sort of leave the audience with, I don't know, two or three actionable steps or things that they can just literally do like today, this week to work on their company's culture and perhaps even think about this whole idea of being calm and performing.

So first off, make sure you are very clear about your standards, what you stand for and your core principles. Because that's your guiding light, your standards. And it shouldn't be teamwork, trust, those are, anybody can say that, make it to what you stand for. And then your group, 15,000 person company, 50 person group division, what have you, you can have your own sub principles for what your group stands for. That's number one. Number two, as a leader, examine what comes out of your mouth and be incredibly disciplined. Right. And then three, I'm going to go deep here. Explore this feeling that you get, okay, of being taken advantage of. If you're kind, explore that feeling of, well, if I'm kind and I don't say that, then they're going to take advantage of me. As I said, a lot of us have biased either. When we grew up, our dad said, hey, if you're nice to somebody, they're going to take advantage of you. So the kid's a jerk to everybody all the time because he's going to take advantage. It's like crazy where that stuff comes up. But we've never in our, the company's history in 19 years had two policies. We've never had a vacation policy or travel and entertainment policy. I said, basically, take the time you need, we're not going to bug you. And then when you travel, stay in a hotel stand, have a nice dinner, like, just be responsible, treat it like it's your own money. And we've never had an issue. But that takes an intense level of vulnerability. And you know, Netflix does it. Just so you know, the large corporation, Netflix has always had that as a policy. So those would be the three things you will end up as a leader, getting far, far, far more out of this, personally, if you get after this, of how you treat people, because then people are going to love being around you and going to want to work with you because of how you treat them and the words that you use.

It's interesting you mentioned vacations because Gemba Academy has a very similar situation. We don't have a vacation policy. I have no idea how much time or whatever people take off. I don't care. Like, similar to you get your work done. What I would say to that, on the flip side, if there's ever been a downside to it, there might be times where I got to go until Greg over here, who's listening right now because he's editing this podcast, and I'd be like, hey, why don't you get out of here for a week? You know, or something like that. So if anything, it's sort of the opposite side of, of the spectrum. Like, people aren't abusing it for sure. You know, and, and we obviously want people to take time off to recharge and all the rest of it. But it's a, It's a very interesting experience that, you know, just a lot of companies probably can't wrap their mind around. And granted, again, we're. We're a smaller company. You know, I don't have 2,000 employees. Right. So I don't know if. Well, maybe that's a question for you. Do you think, like a no vacation policy. Why you mentioned. I mean, there are big companies that do it. So as far as, like being taken advantage of.

So Reed Hastings and Netflix, you know what? He concluded it will cost him more in the bureaucracy to manage the teeny than it would save in terms of people potentially abusing it.

Yeah.

Right. And so.

And then using it, they're probably not getting their work done. Right. And they're going to get sort of weeded out on the other. Other side of it anyhow.

Right, exactly. Because if you believe that you could create a culture of everyone treating one another like responsible adults and just getting our job done, communicating. Right. To me, that's a. Communication is a huge aspect of a business in terms of tapping into the collective knowledge of the group. Probably the, the most important thing of any organization is how do we bring knowledge together that we all know from the day, from the week, everything to where that knowledge can be shared and others can benefit greatly from it?

Yeah.

If you do that, man, it's. Then work can be a total blast and a Total fun. We don't have the classic, you know, managers coming in like, okay, you know, the Chandler and friends. You know, Chandler went from being the top sales guy to the boss. Every time you walk in the room, they'd all stop talking.

Exactly. And it's a real deal. You know, I mean, I remember I've had jobs prior to Gamba Academy and prior to starting this company where, you know, Sunday afternoon I'd start getting that sort of that sinking feeling in my gut like, oh my gosh, I gotta go back to this job. You know, and you know, there's a lot of people out, out there who have that. And that's sad. You know, I wish people didn't have to experience that.

Yeah, no. And, and it can be overcome. And if you knew you were excited that you had a boss that, that has your back, that's removing obstacles, that's taking care of you, then you don't necessarily have that sinking feeling. Right. Because that means there's clear expectations. And so.

Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Hey, name of the book again.

The book is called the Dakota Way and there's a website called the dakotaway.com or you can just go to geekostin.com or shoot me an email at G U I@dakota.com and I'll send you a signed copy of the book.

Wow. Okay, sweet. And so everybody, we're gonna have everything linked up here in the show notes. So to scroll down and whatever you're listening on and be sure to go connect with guy and then check out the book. Hey, any final words of wisdom or anything that you want to leave folks with?

The only thing is if you, if you work towards being kind, you can really change people's lives. That's. And so I think if that's the case, and I do believe it is, then it's well worth the effort.

Yeah. Well said. Awesome. Hey man, thanks for coming on. This has been a blast.

You're awesome. Thanks, Ron. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

All right, take care.

You too.

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