124 - Leadership and Strategic Hiring: Keys to Startup Success with Merit's Jacob Orrin

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Jake Gorham, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the COO and co-founder of Merit, which can be found at merit.com. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me here, Doug. I really appreciate it. I'm excited to share a little bit today.

Thanks. I know we've been talking for a while about the, the nature of your business. Uh, why don't you give us just a little bit of your backstory, and you can tell us a little bit about what Merit does, but really I want to focus on who you are. So let's start with that.

Um, at this point I've been told I'm a serial entrepreneur. This is my fourth startup.

Wow.

It's crazy enough, I've been doing them all with the same co-founder. So myself and Tomer have been doing— working together now for almost 18 years, give or take. Makes me feel a little old when I say it out loud. But, um, yeah, my background is I, I was, uh, born in Richmond, Virginia, lived in New Jersey, spent a short stint in Southeast Asia living with my parents. When I got to be about high school age, my parents, uh, realized that a high schooler in Thailand may be having too much fun, sent me back, uh, to America. I wound up going to Rutgers, then eventually coming out to the West Coast and then getting involved in the technology scene and what all it was out here. And that was kind of the inspiration for my career. Like it was taking the hustle that I developed kind of living on my own in, you know, my parents still lived in Thailand. I was going to a boarding school in the US, kind of taking that hustle and bringing it to what is Silicon Valley. And then taking that forward to a career that now we finally, I feel like I'm in building a company that's so meaningful and doing such cool stuff. It's like the fruition of where I've been trying to get to, I guess, my whole life.

So I think the, the interesting story that I gained from my interview with you in Authority Magazine was that you, you went diving once. Scuba diving and you didn't have your PADI card, which is the certification card that allows you to get rent tanks and tell people I know what I'm doing, I won't kill myself, and you didn't have your card.

And also let me tell you a story. So it's actually a good one, right? So we're out there, it's myself, my co-founder Tomer, actually two other guys, Dylan and Jason, who actually are at the company too. Um, so, you know, if someone didn't have their PADI card, couldn't go scuba diving, what does it really want? You know, it's 2020, it's 2013, 2014 at the time. And like, it's this pervasive, like, are you serious? Like at the time we were all working for a company that did mobile search, right? And so we were embracing, like you could literally figure out when the best time to go pee during a movie was that had just been released that weekend, but you couldn't look up your paddy card on your phone yet. They couldn't look you up through a database. Like it just blew our minds. And the question just kept coming up like, why is this in, like in this modern age with technology being so connected that your credentials aren't verified, that you can't get access to programs, that you're still filling out 35-page documents to apply for every government program you need to be a part of, and they can't somehow reuse the information. They can't connect your verified identity to make these things happen. And so that nucleus of idea festered, for lack of a better word, and eventually I wound up leaving the company. Tomer did as well, and joining me with Dylan and Jason at what became Merit. Of this idea that we can build a platform to be leveraged by private sector, public sector. We obviously focused on government first to help solve these problems of where big programs that need to interact with lots of people across business, government, these lines, and get data moving in an effective fashion is done so with real efficiency and in a really positive way that allows people to get access to what they need to, whether it's disaster management solutions, direct-to-beneficiary programs where you're helping people get government grants, things like that, workforce programs, licensure. So many places we can be, and now we finally are, 7 years later, delivering these to market. And it's been a cool work. It's been really, really something amazing.

One of the stories you shared with me was working with first responders, and I think you used the example of firefighters. I think that's a really good example of how your platform works. Tell us about that.

Yeah, so we—

You got a wildfire, and so now you got a beacon.

We've got people. We've got people in Florida right now helping to support the recovery work for MyDahlia. Like, this is what we do. Now, you know, we basically first try to get all of their credentials in one place on MERIT. They can show up to when they're checking in for whether they're paid volunteer or they're a third-party contractor for the state. They can show up, scan in at the check-in point they're supposed to be scanning in for their work, scan out with the same MERIT credentials. So all their verified identity pieces are checked off at that time. Then at the end of the day, when they have to fill out their paperwork, instead of spending 35 minutes, an hour filling out papers, it's all pre-populated with the digital information from their digital credentials and their digital check-ins. So it's really a 5-minute process to get their final paperwork done for the day. It's not wasting hours at the end. And at the same time, the state's now got all of this paperwork documentation to submit to FEMA to get reimbursed. Today, I mean, before us, people were, imagine what a clipboard does in a hurricane, right? What happens when you've got cases of paper and it's handwritten? Right. I mean, like, I always— like, it's 2023 today. We can do better. We can do better. We just got to put the effort to make it so, right? And so I'm very proud of the fact that we, we work with emergency responders to help make that better, as well as all the other stuff we're doing. We do this work— I gotta share this story. It's one of my biggest pride moments, because my family growing up, we did not have a ton. We were not of large means. We do a lot of educational choice programs, and it's been the pride of my maybe of my life of watching us be able to deliver these programs faster than ever before at scale. 70,000 awards or more. I think it's almost 100,000 awards now in Ohio in less than 18 months to families to get supplemental help after COVID for their education needs for their kids. That's one of the fastest— that is the fastest growing ESSA program in the country. All because you have technology to deliver it faster and more efficiently.

If you didn't have that technology, people would have to go online and find the right source and find and do all that— find all—

The way these programs often work is, you know, there's long applications, manual review processes, paperwork back and forth for submission of claims, paperwork back and forth for getting your reimbursements. I mean, it's just— listen, people are doing the best they can, right? I'm not saying that any other program is bad, but the reality is with a good identity platform like Merit, these solutions are like literally easy. It's just configured and out the door. I mean, we launched Ohio I think in 45 days. And the quote we got was, "Meredith in 45 days, what would've taken us 2 years to never if we had do it on our own." Right? And it's amazing. It's really, I'm so proud of the work we're able to do because we built this platform to deliver it. And so it's very, very cool.

Yeah, you're obviously very excited about it. And that kind of gets me to my next question. You've been at it now for 7 years. You're at market, you're making some money. What gets you excited in the, in the, in, in the morning you get out of bed?

So I'll tell you, I love what we're doing, and it's part of what I love about what we're doing is I love building things. When I was a kid, I was into Legos and I was into making things. And I got older, I was taking apart my remote control cars to put them together into remote control planes, right? I was a maker of things. As I got older, I realized I did not have the skills to be an engineer and architect, but I still love building things and making amazing things. And so We've got to build what I consider one of the best companies I've ever worked at, right? A culture of people that are invested in the mission, invested in what they're doing, striving to see the successes every day. So every morning I get up because I'm West Coast and a lot of my team is East Coast now, and I get— I'm already in the middle of like all the things that are happening, the excitement of the day. And it's inspiring. It's inspiring because I get to see the numbers of the people we're helping and what we're doing. I mean, it's emotionally uplifting to know that you're working for a company that, sure, it's making money and we're going to make profits, right? But we're also helping thousands, millions of people every day get where they need to be, do what they need to do that much better and more efficiently.

So as COO, how's a typical day go for you? Oh, or there is probably no typical day, huh?

I don't know if there's any typical day. I'll say this, which I have 4 beautiful children. 16, 12, 7, and 5. Wow. My days start usually somewhere between 5 and 6 AM, so I can have a few moments of quiet and maybe start the coffee before it begins. Anyone has kids, they know what I'm talking about when it begins in the morning, right?

The chaos of kids.

Yeah. And so, you know, it's the coffee, it's the first emails of the day. It's, I think, There's a lot of challenge still even in my life around work-life integration when you're working from home. And so then it's getting the kids ready, getting them out the door, helping my wife, whatever she needs. She's helping me with whatever I need. Getting to your first calls. It's the, I try to avoid calling it this, but it's the train wreck of the day, right? That you've got your 7 to 8 planned meetings when you started the morning. And by noon you're like, oh, I'm already at 8 and we still have 12 more to go, right? And so I'll never forgive Google for allowing for the 15 in the calendar invite.

Oh God.

You know, your day runs through to a certain point, your kids get home, you get the chance to help them get a little set up, run through the motions of the evening. And then for better or for worse, I wind up back online at some point in the evening doing the end tail bits of the day. So the next morning isn't quite as challenging, let's say that.

Amazing. So it's a pretty full day for you.

It is. But I mean, I would argue that it's probably that way for any founder at any startup, right? Startups are not a joke. Someone says, well, how do you measure time at startups? You measure them in dog years. Each quarter feels like a year. Each year feels like 4 years.

I love that. Each quarter feels like a year.

Well, I'll tell you, you grow like it. That's the truth.

Oh yeah.

Your company's growing from a market that— that's how they grow. And so if you think that comes at a trade, it comes at a trade of time and effort. You work like it's been a year in one quarter.

Right, exactly. Well, you, your, your company, uh, is now completely remote, correct?

Yeah, we, uh, we embrace it. At the beginning of COVID about a few months in, we had the realization that, you know, are we really going to come back for this? Are we really going to continue to force people to move to Silicon Valley to work with us here in Millbrae? And we decided that we weren't going to. So we— I remember we made the announcement, and I would say within a few months we went from 75-some-odd people in Silicon Valley to 5. Everyone moved across the country. It was honestly one of the best decisions we made. I think we're still grappling with it. There's still some challenges, but I know a huge percentage of our employees were able to buy homes and move all over the country. Our recruitment efforts then spread across the country. Now we can hire the best people across the nation to work in the company. It's been phenomenal for us, but I still think there's, there's, there's a gap between work from home and in office. Something I, I know myself I haven't mastered yet. Both with like the quantity of work you allow yourself to do, right, in a day, as well as— and this is a weird one— how you trigger creativity, right? There's some— at least for me, there was always something magical with 2 or 3 people in a conference room with a whiteboard, and ideas get hap— happen. Whereas I find I still have not yet figured out how you channel those same energies like this on a Zoom call, right?

It's a lot tougher. Do you guys ever bring your employees together for— Absolutely. In-person?

We, so we have two major in-person events a year where the entire company comes together. One is called kind of like the on-site where it's really, we pick a boring location in a boring hotel. Last time we were at an airport hotel in Utah because it mathed out that it was the cheapest location everyone to fly to, to be at. Conference rooms. The most exciting part is we ordered some fancy donuts at one point. And that, that was in my opinion a win because it was about getting work done. The enjoyment was doing, being creative together. The next one we do is called Camp, and that one is the exact opposite. No work. It literally is run like summer camp. If you, if you went to, you know, summer, it's BYOB, so that helps. That's what, um, but, uh, and we have everything, activities, color war, tie-dye, all the things you can imagine. But unlike regular summer camp where you have to go, everything's, you know, opt-in. So you can choose to come to an activity or not. There's usually 2 or 3 per session period, whether you wanna go on a hike or you wanna do tie-dye or you wanna make an arts and crafting. Literally we hire people who are summer camp counselors to come run the program. And the idea is that you should spend time with your coworkers. That's cool. It is really easy to say product is screwing me over and I can't believe engineering is missing a deadline as opposed to, Man, Jason seems really overworked. I should talk to him because I don't know if we're going to make that deadline and we should figure out how— like, it humanizes, especially when you're remote all the time. It humanizes the people you work with. And at the end of the day, you know, we're not necessarily a family. I think family is a bad term because you tolerate behavior in your family. You don't— shouldn't tolerate that at work. But we are a team, and a team that plays together wins together. And so on some extent, we got to make sure that we play together, right? And we start to see each other as whole humans. Not just as engineering or product or sales or account management. We're more than our functions. And to that matter, you see people as more than their functions, they can deliver more than their functions. People feel empowered to say, yeah, I'm not— I am the account manager, but I also know that we all— we, we live and die as one ship. Rising tide lifts all boats, but one hole sinks the whole ship. And so if I see something, I can say something, I can be an ally to every other team in the company.

As—

and if they feel— you feel obligated to do so because you're not just I'm accounting or I'm account management. We're part of the team, and you're immersing together. That feeling only comes from those kind of interactions, right?

You're breaking down the silos so people don't feel like they're in their own isolated little things.

So what is it that you bring to the table that's unique?

So I'll tell you, I joke, you know, my career was originally a lot of sales and business development. Eventually I shifted my way into an operations role, and The truth is I pretty much lean on my one and only skill, which is good communication.

And I'm not—

it's definitely gotten better over the years, but it's an ability to listen and hear people where they are and be able to communicate with them where they are. I learned this truthfully. I say my career was maybe a little stalled. It's sort of when my development as an employee was stalled until I had my first kid. Now, I'll confess that you don't necessarily have to have kids to learn this lesson. I had my first kid at 23. I could say there's value in being single in your 30s. Having a kid woke me up to the reality that you can't communicate with a 3-year-old like you would a 7-year-old or a 25-year-old. And for that matter, when your kid's in a certain one mood or another mood, you got to deliver the message to the moment, right? That hit me like a ton of bricks as a father. And then it's— I started to see it everywhere in my life. Why am I having so much trouble communicating with this person? Well, man, I'm not taking into account what's present for them, you know. Where are they? Where can they hear? How can they hear this right now? And being responsible, not just that I told them something, but I told them in a way that they would be able to internalize and take action. And that shifted everything in how I interacted with my coworkers, with my subordinates, with my superiors, with customers. And it that fundamental concept of being able to hear people where they are. And for that matter, which really took the muscle, was be able to listen to people regardless of where they are.

I have a phrase that I use in the listening skills that I teach called listening others into existence. Ah, where— because as you have described this and you've experienced this, people have a deep need to be heard and validated, and you can listen to them and validate them. You don't necessarily have to agree with them. But if they feel heard and validated, they calm down emotionally. There's some really good neuroscience behind this too. They calm down emotionally and they're willing, they're willing to problem solve and work with you.

Yep.

If you blow them off and argue with them and fight with them, fight to be right, which so many people do, it just makes things worse.

Yeah, you know, I, I say this so often, you know, you can— there's always the hammer, it's always in your back pocket.

That's right.

Once you take it out, that's it. It's always— what is it, that story, uh, the axe forgets, the tree never does, right? So as soon as you swing that hammer, you can never take it back. So keep that in your back pocket as long as possible. You— it's— you want to wait, you know. I, I think your points are perfect, especially when it comes to receiving feedback. I think one of the greatest things I learned was how to get really present with my reactions, right? Because trust I encourage people to give feedback in my company, and especially when they're giving it to me, it is hard to hear, especially if I disagree, right? At the same time, if someone's taking, working up the stones, right, to come talk to the chief operating officer and co-founder of the company and give them feedback, I damn well better be ready to respect that and listen, even if I disagree. Hear it and internalize it and get rid of the noise of their emotions and pick out the golden nugget because there's always a golden nugget in there. If anything, they are mad about something that you think you did and clearly you created a world where they could figure, that's how the impression left with them. You gotta own that.

I would suggest that you can do, go one step, that's fantastic. And you can go one step further. Don't just say, try to sift through the emotions and find where the gold is, take those emotions and work with them.

Yeah.

And that's what I do. I teach people how to listen to emotions. In fact, my mantra is ignore the words, listen to the emotions, reflect back the emotions with a you statement. Yeah, when you do that, that creates that deep hearing and validation that we're talking about, where now people will listen to you. And maybe they're really mad at you. It isn't anything you did, they're just mad, and you happen to be the safe guy that they can, they can attack. I would say the peacemaker takes the first blows.

So true.

And if you can, if you can, if you can listen them into existence, they'll calm down. And now they're in a place where they can problem solve. Another one of my little aphorisms is de-escalate, then problem solve. Yeah, many people try to problem solve while people are upset and angry. It does not work.

It's so true.

So you've got this organization that you've been building, and obviously you see listening as being a vital, probably foundational skill in your work. How do you go about teaching everybody else around you about the importance of that? You can't be the only listener in the organization.

You know, it's— there's a couple layers. One, it's, it's still in the interview process. We take interviewing really seriously. And still to this day, I'm not perfect, but I interview almost every single candidate before they get on. Wow. Listen, my rule is if we're small enough, right?

Don't do that.

I can make the time to, if they're worth it enough to be here, it's worth my time to meet them. You can get a good pulse on someone, how they react to that meeting. I think it's a role modeling factor, right?

Yes.

When you see something, say something. So often when I see people, breaking down in those communication moments. And it happens even on calls where I'm in there, where I, I, I do this thing where I lurk on calls where maybe there's 15 people in the call, but if they didn't notice, I'm in there too. And then you can't correct someone in the moment, but you can go back and talk to them. Hey, what, how did that land for you? How'd that go? And walk them through where they could have done things differently. And the last thing, we, we still, as a company, every Wednesday do an all-hands presentation. They all look the same. There's some sort of means of sharing how you do, like, how do you do, how you assign work, how you communicate about work. I have presentations on how you take responsibility for the work you've done, how you communicate as a manager, all these things that are these concepts. I joke, I call it golden rules of the kitchen because early in my career I worked in the kitchen and there were so many basic lessons you learn, like pay it forward, Every— no dish is made by one chef. There's a group of people that are doing. So how are you making it so the next person can do their thing? And that's— then talk about how did you do it in your communication? How did you make it easy for that person to hear you? How did you make it easy for them to report back? You know, how do you do delegation? One of my favorite presentations on delegation, because people so often forget that the level you can delegate different people is all about the relationship you have with them and the communication styles you built. And they take time to develop. Not everyone's a level 4 delegation person the day when they start. And so I do these programs probably once a quarter. I pick one or two of these presentations and we mix them in so we keep these concepts fresh for everyone in the company.

Wow, excellent.

Perfect. We're working on it.

Yeah, no, I mean, the whole point— I mean, one of the, one of the things that, that I've learned is that when— one of the things you should be doing as a leader in a company is developing 2 to 3 levels down the people that are going to replace you someday. And what skills do they need to develop that they don't have right now that it's your responsibility to make sure they get?

It's, listen, I, I'd like to think we're working towards that goal. It's that, that's the kind of stuff that takes organizations from good to great, right? I'll tell you one of the things that struck me, you were talking about the, your, your, your aphorisms for listening and communication. I don't know if you've read that book, uh, Multipliers, but it's so true that I found that if you're a good community, you're listening, you're helping people work through their issues to build them on themselves, you're getting 120% out.

Well, that's right. There's something even deeper, and that is there are 4— 3 psychological, um, services that a leader provides to a group: focus, direction, and safety. And Google came out with a study 2, 3 years ago trying to— they're trying to understand whether top 1/10 of 1% teams outperformed everybody else by orders of magnitude. And what the researchers discovered was the fact that those teams had psychological safety, emotional safety. And emotionally safe teams will outperform other teams by orders of magnitude. And that's because the lead— and the leaders are responsible for creating that psychological safety. Well, how do you do that? You do it by listening and by not being critical and by knowing how to coach for improvement and, and by working down 2 and 3 levels and, and making, making yourself accessible and delegating and modeling right behavior. And that's the secret. That's the secret. It's not difficult, but there are skills that have to be taught. A lot of people are promoted into leadership positions and they're never taught these skills, so all they, all they know is what they've seen. And unfortunately, most people have had really bad leaders or managers. And so they think that's the way it's to be done. And it turns out that, you know, it's not.

I'm probably the product of that horror story in the sense that in my early career I worked for a fashion company. I won't name the company, but they definitely had a CEO that believed that you should always feel like you're looking down the barrel of a gun every day. It was a very energy, high energy, intense, wouldn't have called this an emotionally safe environment. It was a fashion company. They all a little intense. But I thought, well, that's what a great leader looks like. And I remember my first company, I tried to emulate that and there were people in tears. I was the worst manager. I was the manager no one wanted and no one wanted to be around. And it wasn't until my second startup and I'd worked for some other people that I'd gotten to see what amazing managers of kindness and empathy looked like. And again, that was part of that shift. All the same time I got a kid, I started to realize, whoa, Like, this is not how goodness happens. This, like, don't be that person. And, uh, now I can say, you know, those, those difficult managers have been the best educators of my life.

Oh, sure, you learn what not to do.

You never want to be that guy.

Yeah, but then how do you— the challenge for a lot of people is, and I don't want to be like that, but then how do I, how do I become different?

Invest.

And that's the trick. You got to invest in, in your own self and, and learn from people who, who who know, and that can be challenging. Yeah, no, it's powerful. A couple other things I've learned, and you just repeated it. I've interviewed a lot of founders on this show, and what I hear consistently is if you want to build a business and scale it, your first 5 hires are the most important hires you're going to make. You've got to hire people that know how to read talent because they're going to be hiring people, and they've got to know how to read the kind of talent that you're going to need to scale. And so when you do those first 5 hires, you've gotta, those are critical because what you don't wanna do, and I think you talked about this in the interview, what you don't wanna do is hire people that you like that can't do the job and now you gotta fire 'em and that's miserable.

Yeah. I, I use this analogy all the time to describe it over the startup. Have you ever made a 9x9 pan of brownies?

Oh, sure. Uh-huh.

You put 1 tablespoon of vinegar in there. I use the word vinegar cuz we're being recorded.

Right?

You're gonna notice, you're gonna know, right? You got a sheet pan of brownies, maybe you do, maybe you don't. Cisco is a sheet pan. They can survive a misstep here and there from a personality perspective.

Right.

Maybe they can't. We'll leave that for someone else to decide. But a startup's a 9x9 pan. Every single ingredient matters, the quantity, the quality, everything. So you've gotta treat it as such. That means ingredients matter, right? You gotta take the time to pick the right ones, to get those right people, because that core team, that's the culture you're building. You only get to influence culture very, very limited fashion. As soon as you get to about 10, 12 people, your company has a culture and you're wagging the dog, right?

Exactly right.

And so you need to get real intentional about it early and be intentional about it consistently as you scale up. And that's something we've— I've learned with my co-founder over the years. We didn't do it great always. Every time we do a company, a new company, we are leaned in on this concept. Culture is critical. Early and forever, right? It only stays that way if you continuously invest in it and nurture it as long as it goes.

Absolutely. I think that's probably one of the most important lessons that leaders and founders can learn, and it's, it's not something that's taught in business school, and people are not taught how to do it. It takes a set of nuanced skills, I think, to be able to do that. And maybe it takes serial entrepreneurs like you who gotten burned and made a lot of mistakes to finally figure out, no, there's a better way to do this. Be, be an empathic leader. Be the leader that everyone wants to follow. And that's the secret.

It's, uh, it's no secret. It's no secret. It's just, it's a road to get there, I think.

Yeah, probably so. And it requires, I mean, it requires authenticity and vulnerability to a large degree, and emotional competency. You've got to be emotionally self-aware. Or at least willing to become emotionally self-aware.

100%. Yeah, it's— I use these two terms always. It's sharpening your pencil. You've got to always be willing to be sharpening your pencil because life dulls you down. Life makes you jaded. I've had days where, you know, 15 meetings in a row and it was 15 sandpaper meetings. Either you can either end that day and live with who that made you, or you can say, no, no, I'm going to sharpen my pencil. I'm going to go I'm gonna do an hour workout and burn that out. I'm gonna go meditate or go to a class or do something. I'm gonna, I'm gonna resharpen my pencil to know that sure, today rubbed you down a little bit. We're gonna keep that point going, right?

I pick up my violin and play jazz.

Always keep improving yourself, working yourself. You make that who you are, then doing things like, I'm gonna become more emotionally aware. I'm gonna be able to learn to deal with negative feedback. I'm gonna find a way to, to communicate with engineers effectively and stop trying to commit homicide. All of those things are possible. If you're invested in getting better as a person, right? Personal life, your professional life, make that who you are.

Absolutely.

You're in your— it's limitless. You'll always be growing and getting better.

That's right. Well, one more question. This is kind of a little more personal. Jake, what's one thing about yourself that we wouldn't know about unless you revealed it to us?

So I, I guess I sort of revealed a little bit. I had a dream as a kid, and maybe even still today, I want— I want to own a restaurant. I want to— I love cooking and the joy it brings people when they eat a good meal.

Yep.

Whatever worse, I grew up in a family, very meager means. My mother was an amazing cook, and food was love, and food to me still is love. When I've had a hard day, at the end of the day, I will literally go into my kitchen and bake 200 cookies. I worked in a catering hall, actually, in So like I make things at scale. I'll bake birthday cakes with butterflies, you name it, right? And I will do this all the time and it drives my wife nuts cuz everyone's, she says everyone's getting fat. It's not fair. So now we pack it up and give it to our friends. But I cook, I cook and I bake and I dream of someday being able to do that at scale, probably closer to something like, I don't know if you know Bon Jovi's nonprofit where he runs these restaurants that effectively pay what you can. I would love to be able to be a part of something like that where you can bring smiles to people's faces, whether they've got the means or not. People, people have a good meal. Good meal makes you feel like amazing. It makes, it brings love. And I'd love to be able to keep bringing that.

So interesting you say that because I'm a chef too, and I got it. I've been cooking all my life, but where, when I was a trial lawyer, you know, you never got completion on anything. It would take years to go from start to finish. And what I really loved about cooking was that in an hour, an hour and a half, it was done, and there were the results right there, instant results. And, um, that's what I really— and I agree with you, it's love and it's creativity and it's getting instant gratification, nearly instant gratification, for some hard work that you don't get, you know, in the professional world.

That said, I was definitely on a sourdough kick during COVID Oh, I'm still on that. I never reached completion. All of mine were failures and I'm still working on it.

Oh, I've got sourdough down cold. I don't do much baking in the wintertime. I mean, in the summertime, but now it's coming into the fall, another month or two, I'll start baking again. And I bake at least one big loaf of sourdough. Either whole wheat or French style every week. And it takes 15 minutes of labor. It takes 38 hours of time, but 15 minutes of labor. Anyway, I'll leave it.

Well, I'll hold on to that one, Doug.

I appreciate it. Well, we'll go off and I'll tell you how to do it. It's really easy. Thank you so much, Dick. It's been a great conversation.

Thank you, Doug, for having me. Really appreciate it.

Absolutely.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media, just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings Your comments and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.